By Daryl Rothman
“From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”
Shakespeare~
“Ah,” the man said, glimpsing the placard adorning the restaurant door. “Fitting.”
They were comfortable, but it still was not often he took his family out for a nice meal. Prices had gotten so steep–ironic, if you thought about it. Soaring food costs had been among the chief culprits in the Global Famine (GF, to which it was now most commonly referred). The year was 3024 PGF (Post Global Famine). For kids, the famine was but a distant specter of a world long gone, something studied in mandatory GF courses in school, something to which their parents sometimes referred in hushed tones, but not really affecting them tangibly. But there was a danger in failing to heed lessons of the past, the man knew. It really hadn’t been that long ago. He shook his head, recalling the solemnity with which his grandparents would speak of the matter when he was young, citing the solemnity of their grandparents, and so on, before them.
“Here, dear,” his wife said, placing her hands under his head, which had lurched precariously to one side. “Let me.” The man smiled at her, while lamenting the irony—-he knew better than to shake his head, especially without his neck halo. His wife wore hers, as usual. Children were required by law to do so. Life without halos, people who walked on their own two feet instead of buzzing around in zip carts, teeth that were more than mere vestigial remnants–these were but vestiges of that ancient history, before the GF and before bodies had atrophied and brains and heads swelled to disproportionate degrees. Of course, it didn’t seem disproportionate now; this was simply the way things were. But the man recalled the wonder with which as a child he’d read and seen photos of pre-GF humans, the wonder with which his own children did so today. Hard to fathom, such times. When food was the prime source of nourishment. Owing to an extraordinary mutation, a sliver of the world’s population had been able to survive the famine, coming to rely upon the written word rather than food and water for sustenance. Yet even among those gifted with the mutation, in time it became mostly the very wealthy who could afford literature. There were always the bootleggers, the black market. But as was the way of things, segments of the new world stratified out as the centuries passed and many descendants of wealthy ancestors saw their own fortunes ebb and in some instances even became destitute. There had been wars and rebellions and strife, and it was not lost upon the man that their world might always be on the brink.
His head now firmly re-centered, the man sloughed off his momentary embarrassment, opened the door and shepherded his family inside. Ollie, their eight-year-old son, clipped the doorframe with one of his wheels. His sister Xenia, three years his senior, rolled her eyes before sailing smoothly past. His wife touched his arm lightly and smiled at him as she rolled past.
“Greetings!” The nattily attired maître d’, a wisp of a man with an even wispier moustache, rolled up to them. His head lolled atop his pencil frame like an animated candy apple. “Have you reservations?”
“Good evening,” the man said. “We do. The Baroques. Four.”
The maître d’ executed a slight bow, more of nod, really—-he was halo-less, naturally, this being such a reputable establishment, so a full bow was out of the question. “Excellent,” he said, scouring a tablet. “Ah, here we are. Right this way.”
After they were seated, a waiter approached and gingerly placed tiny scrolls of paper into their saucers. Ollie regarded his quizzically.
“Kind of like a prologue,” his mother explained. “It’s like an appetizer I suppose. A little something before the main course.” Ollie unrolled his paper excitedly.
“Thy ambition,” he read. “Thou scarlet sin, robb’d this bewailing land.” His father smiled. His boy was a good eater, and why not? —-he had been voracious from the moment he left the womb. He picked up his menu and gulped at some of the prices. Yes, it was a nice place, but even the children’s meals were exorbitant: one order of three Hemingway shorts ran 5,000 credits.
“Can you believe this?” he asked his wife. She regarded him plaintively.
“Please, dear. We never get out. This isn’t a speed-reading restaurant.”
He hmphed. The waiter returned and spoke in effusive tones about their specials. Shakespeare. Joyce.
“How much?” the man inquired. His wife looked away.
They would not be getting the specials. The man ordered a Great Gatsby, his wife Sense and Sensibility, their daughter The Sound and the Fury, and their son (after lobbying unsuccessfully for a full novel), an order of Tolstoy micro fiction. The man, considering himself well-fed, expressed surprise that the Russian master had dabbled in such media. “We took a few liberties,” the waiter acknowledged quietly. “It’s morsels from edited-out sections of War and Peace.” The man hmphed again.
“So,” inquired the mother of her children, “anything interesting at school?”
“I dunno,” mumbled Ollie. Xenia groaned.
“You never know,” she said.
Ollie didn’t look up from his appetizers. “So?”
“Now, now,” said their mother. “Manners, both of you. We are Baroques, after all. What about you, sweetie?”
Xenia leaned forward and spoke in hushed tones. “I’m worried about Lanie,” she said, glancing furtively about to ensure no eavesdroppers. “We think she’s developing a reading disorder. She’s so thin.”
“Oh my,” said the mother. “I am sorry to hear that. Is she getting help?”
“She won’t listen,” Xenia insisted. “She thinks she looks good. Wants to impress Gordy, you know.” She shook her head. “But she’s a waif. We can’t get her to read.”
“BOR-ING.”
“Shut up!” Xenia told her brother.
“That’s enough,” their father said. “Both of you.”
Their meal arrived. Ollie sat up, wide-eyed, licking his lips. “Start with the lens closest on our left,” the mother reminded her children. Most meals were of course consumed via tablet, plasma, or touchscreens of one form another-—this was fine dining, however, and their selections were served in classic hardback. Most people’s eyes were unaccustomed to book consumption, plus the lighting was dim, so the provision of reading lens tableware was standard fare at any reputable establishment. Each of them plucked up a lens and started in.
“Not so fast,” Xenia admonished her brother, who was flipping pages frantically. “You’ll get indigestion.” Ollie stuck out his tongue in protest, but a loud burp escaped, and his family twittered.
“Don’t read too much,” the mother suggested. “You should save room for epilogue.”
When they finished, the waiter wheeled up the dessert cart: Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Salinger. A fancy selection of fables. “Did you save room?” he inquired hopefully. He held up The Brothers Karamazov before the man. “A very fine vintage. Barely read. Take in the bouquet.”
The man smirked. “The Brothers Karamazov, for epilogue? Good God, man, we’re not gluttons.” He folded his arms, but couldn’t escape his children’s beseeching stares. “Maybe we can share a few things,” he finally said. The waiter grinned triumphantly.
“Dad,” Xenia lamented after their order was placed. “Really, share?”
“We’re not made of money, young lady.”
Xenia sat back and folded her arms. “It’s not that. But now we have to all scoot up next to each other. It’s embarrassing.”
“Here, here,” said the mother. “Not necessary. We’ll all read a few bites at a time, and pass it.”
After their epilogue—-at one point during which Xenia had to snatch the tablet from her brother, who she insisted was reading more than his share–the man wiped his lens with a cloth and exhaled. He was very full. He summoned their waiter. “We’ve marked our spots–please pack up the leftovers.” His wife regarded him.
“Dear,” she said.
He turned to her. “Did you see the bill? Besides, I might want to read a bite before bed.” His wife looked down.
The waiter extracted a wand from his jacket and scanned it over each of their meals. Ollie snatched up one of the scrolls which had lodged under his plate, and quickly consumed a last few unread morsels. Xenia covered her face. The unread portions of each meal fluttered out as the wand crossed, and the waiter scooped them up and neatly arranged them in to-go sleeves. The man nodded his thanks and extended his wrist. The waiter passed the wand over, the man’s credit implant registered with a beep, and the waiter looked away politely as the man grudgingly punched in his gratuity. They took their leftovers and wheeled out of the restaurant. The man shook his head—-carefully—as he pondered just how expensive it was to feed a family these days. Times had sure changed.
* * *
Daryl Rothman’s YA/Fantasy novel, The Awakening of David Rose, was released by Evolved Publishing, September 9th, 2019, and was a winner in the Best Young Adult Fiction category for Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards. First in a series of three, it was inspired by (and the protags named for) his children, and the protective relationship between them. Daryl has written for a variety of esteemed publications, including Men With Pens, KM Weiland, CS Lakin, Carol Tice, Joanna Penn, Problogger and more, and recognitions include Flash Fiction winner for Cactus Moon Press, Flash Fiction second place winner for Amid the Imaginary, and Honorable Mention for Glimmer Train’s New Writer’s Short Story Award Contest.
Book II in the David Rose Series debuted Sept. 26, 2022, and Gospel, a literary-suspense novel, released in November, 2024, was a finalist for Feathered Quill’s Book Awards for Adult Fiction.
You can learn more about Daryl’s work on his website at DarylRothman dot com or his FB Author page at Author Daryl C Rothman.