Peripheral Visions: Two Sons and a Daughter

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Two Sons and a Daughter

I only saw him once more after the 20 Year Class Reunion. He was walking up the street, his face as creased in a frown of concentration. In other words, he looked much like he did back in high school. He still looked young; I, on the other hand, felt old long before then, old with worry for my children.

It had been years since that June night at the class reunion when we had last spoken. I'd turned away from him that night, telling myself I would never think if him again. Instead, he'd been constantly in my mind for months leading up to that final chance encounter.

I didn't even think to ask him why he was in town. It might have interesting to know; he hated the city, he hated the state, and he hated those of us who had been born and bred there, those of us who had stuck to our principles and our homeland and had never left.

And he was right.

But I was angry – angry with him for having seen so much, for having spoken about what he saw.

I stopped him, not with a friendly greeting but with harsh words of accusation. I remember telling him that he should be locked up.

He was as remote and scornful as ever as he replied: "For what? For seeing and respecting the truths that hung before the eyes of all for year after long year? For refusing to ignore history? Or for seeing the future – that's your real gripe about me. You think if I can see the future, I can change it. But you're wrong. I can't change the future. Maybe everyone, acting together with a common purpose, could have changed it... but that's no longer possible, is it? Communal decision-making is what we once called democracy, and we all know what popular opinion is about democracy these days. So maybe it's you who should be locked up... for your criminal negligence of facts and necessities. For your selfish embrace of wishful thinking and willful delusions. For taking your hand off the wheel and letting civilization crash."

Like I say, I was angry. But I was angry out of fear – fear for my children. His words pushed me into a place of even greater rage, and greater terror. I found myself unable to respond, unable to move, as he turned his back to me and continued on his way.

I only heard rumors about him after that – he'd bought himself citizenship in New Zealand; he'd created some sort of underground dwelling in the mountains of Virginia; he'd joined a Satan-worshiping cabal. Knowing how accurate rumors are, I believed none of it.

Two sons and a daughter, he had said when we were in high school. You're going to have two sons and a daughter. A prediction he made when I refused to believe that he could see the future. I laughed at him then, and I laughed at him when, years later, my third child was born and I had two daughters and a son.

***

The June night of our 20th class reunion had a wild, free feel about it. I was 38, turning 39 the following month; I felt a touch of dread at the approach of middle age, but I was doing well at work, I was happy in my marriage, and I had three wonderful kids. They drive me crazy with their ingratitude and their insolence, but I loved them more than anything in the world.

I'd last seen him in 1996, on the night of our graduation from Corvana High School. I don't think anybody expected him to attend the party at Sissy Silas' family; ranch, but there he was, smiling like I'd never seen him smile before. It confused me until I figured out that the reason for his happiness was that he was getting the hell out of Kansas, getting the hell out of Keruma, and getting away from us.

He wasn't very popular. I'd actually tried to befriend him – I don't know why. Probably because I was the president of Soldiers in Christ, an evangelical youth group that disbanded a couple years later when the teacher who sponsored and oversaw it was accused of raping three female students – accusations that opened the floodgates, until more than forty accusers eventually came out of the woodwork. I remember thinking none of them were telling the truth. I remember thinking the accusations were a combination of hysteria and a coordinated smear campaign targeting the teacher because he was an unapologetically militant Christian at a school where much of the staff were either namby-pamby feel-good-in-fellowship types or else secular humanists. How stupid I was back then.

Stupid. The word that Devon had used, over and over, to explain his feelings for us, his fellow classmates.

Devon showed up at the end of freshman year. He had a strange, standoffish air; the air of someone who was always watching, and yet never interested. The air of someone who was assessing and judging but had no esteem and no condemnation. He had a way of looking through you, or past you. He wasn't happy where he was; I could understand that. I heard teachers discussing a hard home life, a drunken father, some sort of abuse. At some point during junior year he ended up living by himself, emancipated by court order from whatever family drama had brought him to Keruma.

It was while trying to get to be friends that I visited the house he lived in by himself. It was barely furnished. There was a card table and a couple folding chairs in the living room; there were a few pots and pans, along with a few mismatched plates and bowls, in the kitchen, and a futon on the floor of one of the bedrooms. It was a big place for just him, but it was a house that the county, or maybe the city, had provided. He was getting some sort of financial assistance – not a lot; looking for a glass to get some water, I found a stack of Ramen noodle packages. Other than that and some crackers and peanut butter, his cupboards were bare. His refrigerator was hardly any better stocked, with only a quart of milk and some sort of cheese.

I'd tried to get him to talk about where he came from, how he ended up among us, and what he thought about the way the others at school treated him. Most of the kids in our class had known each other since kindergarten; a lot of us didn't take kindly to outsiders, and Devon made no effort to become anything else.

"Hey, I saw Carlos giving you a hard time the other day," I remember saying to him as we sat at the card table, me with the glass of water in my hand.

"Who?"

"Carlos. I saw him driving by while you were walking home after school..."

"Actually, I was walking to work," Devon said.,

"You have a job?" I asked.

Devon glanced around the room. "All this luxury brings bills," he said.

How much... or how little... was he being helped by the city or the county? I decided it would be impolite to ask.

"Anyway, I saw him stop and roll down his window," I said. "I don't imagine he was offering you a ride."

"He was insulting my coat," Devon said. "He told me I look like a bum."

Devon's clothes were perfectly fine. They weren't brand new, and they weren't the expensive, stylish brands that other young man in the class all wore, but he didn't look like a bum.

"I like your coat," I said. "It's a little beat up, but – "

"It's second hand," Devon said flatly. "I got it at the Salvation Army for $6. It's ugly, but it keeps me warm."

"That's what coats are for," I said.

"I don't understand what anyone wants from clothes except that they keep you warm, protect you from the sun, or let you cover up and obey senseless laws about 'obscenity' or whatever," Devon said gruffly.

Was he really this uncaring and harsh? Or was this an act – a response to the way people treated him?

I tried to find out more about his background, but he stopped me by saying, "I don't want to talk about the past. It's gone. It doesn't matter."

"We can't hardly talk about the future," I said.

"Of course we can," Devon told me. "People all seem to think the future is going to be better. We'll all be happy in the future. But that's not how it's gonna be."

"Really? How do you know that?" I asked.

Devon almost looked exasperated. He never showed much emotion except for giving off a vibe of vague exasperation, like he was impatient with the world around him. "I pay attention," he said.

"Okay," I said, "but still, you never know what might happen. Someone might solve all the problems we're facing."

"They won't," he said. "They'll just make things worse."

"Not on purpose," I said.

"Yes, on purpose," Devon said. "That way, once they create more problems, they can say they have the solutions and people will support them."

"You're cynical," I said, tinging the words with a laugh.

Devon seemed to shrug without shrugging. He was the coldest person I'd ever met; he could have been considered cool if he'd been a little friendlier... or at least a little less scornful.

"And you can't see the future," I added.

"Now, that's something you don't know," Devon said, seeming for a moment more animated than I'd ever seen him.

"Oh yeah?"

"I can see the future," Devon said. "Here and there. In patches. It's been... useful. Sometimes."

"How?"

"It's why I wasn't home the night my father killed my mother and my younger brothers and sisters."

"Uh..." I had wanted to hear about his background, and his family, to get a sense for why he was the way he was, but I didn't expect anything like this. "Are you serious? Did that really happen?"

Devon frowned at me. "I'm not making it up," he said.

"Where did this happen?"

"The town where we used to live. In Idaho."

"Jesus," I said. "How did you end up here?"

"My aunt took me in."

"Why aren't you still with her?"

"My uncle didn't like me being in his house. And I didn't like him. I didn't like either of them, actually. Things are better this way."

"Better? With your whole family dead?"

"With me not living with my aunt and uncle and their kids."

"Fuck," I said, feeling like I'd stepped in something nasty. "I'm sorry."

Devon's constant frown took on a quizzical quality. "Why?" he asked. "None of that is your fault."

"I just... I'm sorry you went through all that," I said.

"I don't know why it matters to you," Devon said.

"Well," I said, "I'd like to be friends."

Devon's quizzical frown deepened. "Why?" he asked me. "No one here likes me. You don't have any reason to like me."

"Well, okay, then, if you don't want to be friends, what am I doing here?" I asked him. I was trying to be teasing, but the question sounded more sincere than I expected.

Devon looked down and seemed to shrug, again without actually shrugging.

"So you knew what was coming?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said softly, knowing I meant the murder of his family.

"Do you know why he...?" I couldn't find the words for the question.

"Because she was pregnant," Devon said.

"Did she tell him that?"

"She must have. She didn't say anything that I heard."

"So how did you know?" I asked.

Devon looked at me again, then said: "The same way I know you are gonna meet a girl named Maeve. You're gonna have two sons and a daughter."

I didn't know what to say to this sudden veer from his past into my supposed future. I wasn't sure if he was joking.

"I always knew when she was pregnant," Devon said, suddenly seeming subdued. Embarrassed, I thought, for that strange comment.

"How?" I asked.

"I just did. Like I knew the times when he would be coming home drunk. I knew whether he'd fall asleep without hurting anyone; I knew when he'd hit her... when he'd hit me. When he'd hit one of the younger kids, so I'd put myself in the way, and then he could hit me instead. Only, that never worked because once I was on the floor he'd hit them anyway."

What a horror show, I remember thinking as he described his home life to me.

"I knew it the same way I'd know when he was going to come home screaming because he'd gotten into a fight with his boss and quit. The same way I knew the cops were coming to our house because he'd beaten up his foreman."

"Okay," I said. "All right. You picked up on a lot of clues about how your father and your family behaved... you could predict what they were likely to do from their patterns of behavior. But how can you predict anything about me? We don't really know each other."

"Not just you," he said. "That asshole Carlos? He's gonna end up dead in a few years. Drunk at the wheel. I mean, drunk and then he falls asleep at the wheel. But none of that really matters. The terrible things that are coming are going to make all of that look meaningless."

"What terrible things?"

This time Devin really did shrug. Then he said: "America is over. The world is over. Everything's going to come to an end. It'll take a long time, and there's going to be a lot of fighting and noise and suffering. But there's no changing it. It's what people have already decided."

"Who decided?"

"The whole world," he said. "It must be what they want, because it's obviously coming for us, and all I see is people racing toward it."

"Okay..." I said. I felt bad for the guy. He was obviously detached from reality. I wondered if this was what my mother, a psychologist, meant when she'd say that someone was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Twenty years later, the things he'd told me made a lot more sense, but I still didn't want to believe them. And anyway... I had two daughters and a son. Not two sons and a daughter.

***

He was sitting by himself at a table in a dark corner of the hotel's event room. I almost didn't see him there. When I realized who it was, I was surprised. Why would Devon have bothered attending the reunion? Then I reminded myself that for all I knew, he'd been attending the reunions all along. They happened every five years; Tracee Jones, June DeBroglio, and Tim Mason were the enthusiastic trio that made sure of it.

I had attended the five-year reunion, and I knew Devon hadn't been there. But I'd missed the ten and fifteen year events because I'd moved with my family to Akron for work, and it just seemed too far away, and too much trouble, for a weekend of nostalgia over high school. Anyway, I didn't want to apart from my kids for something so trivial.

We'd moved back from Akron a couple of years earlier, and at this point my oldest daughter had finished a year of college and wasn't coming home for the summer. The twins were getting ready to go to college, too; they'd graduated high school just a couple of weeks earlier. Maybe that was what put me in a frame of mind to go catch up with my old high school pals, see what they'd been up to, see who'd show up to the gathering. The fact that the reunions were now so convenient to get to made it all seem like a lark.

And it was a lark. It was fun; it felt like a momentary return to youth. Tracie, June, and Tim had done a great job of getting the event room, and the large outside patio space, decorated; tiny, bright lights hung on wires, invisible in the evening air and inside the dim room, so they looked like stars or fireflies.

I'd had one or two drinks from the cash bar; that was also part of my ebullient mood. That, and I'd been chatting with Sandra, who I'd dated through the end of junior year and up to graduation. She was still sexy, and she made it clear that she would have liked to revisit some of our teenage exploits. I was not about to cheat on my wife, and Sandra respected that, but her interest made me feel good about myself, and her beauty intoxicated me.

Before and after my chat with Sandra I had been circulating around, greeting everyone I came upon, getting brief updates about their kids, their divorces, their careers. When I saw Jim Stapledon, I asked about Carlos, because the two of them used to be best buds.

Jim shrugged, pulling on his bottle of beer, then said, "You didn't hear? Carlos died a long time ago."

"He did? What happened?"

"Drove his pickup into a telephone pole or something... I'm not really sure. Car crash, that's all I know. Like, seven, eight years ago."

"Christ" I said. "That's terrible." I didn't remember Devon's prediction at that point. I didn't remember that until after I'd seen Devon, which happened a while after I spoke with Jim.

At first, sitting down at Devon's table seemed like it might be fun. "Hey!" I greeted him jovially. I was feeling happy, friendly, excited to see everyone... including Devon, who I'd more or less avoided after that one visit to his big, lonely house. I was thinking of that house, and him in it, when I tried to make conversation. "So – where are you living these days? In a nicer place than that house over on Branson Street. Or wait, was it Bradford Street?"

"Branson," Devon said. HE didn't seem surprised to see me. He didn't seem terribly enthusiastic, either.

"I hope wherever it is you live now, you're not still alone."

"I am," Devon said.

"Aw, man," I said. "Really?"

"I've had enough of family for one life," he said.

"That's too bad," I said. "You really don't know what you're missing..."

Devon shook his head. "I expect I do," he said. "But tell me about yourself these days. Your family."

"Well, I'm married," I said.

"So I see," Devin said, nodding toward my hand, where my wedding ring gleamed in the dim light. "Is her name Maeve?"

The question took me by surprise until, with a jolt, I remembered his prediction from more than two decades earlier. Suddenly, it call came back to me, and it all felt too familiar: Sitting with Devon on folding chairs at a table, a glass in my hand. And him telling me about my life.

"Yes, she is," I replied, slowly. "You predicted that, didn't you?"

As he had all those years ago, Devon seemed to shrug without shrugging.

"And you told me... what was it? You told me that I would have two sons and a daughter. But surprise!" I lifted the glass at him, grinning. "I've got two daughters and a son."

Devon actually smiled at that. "You do," he said. "That's wonderful. Congratulations."

"And so you're alone? As in divorced? Never married?"

"Never married," Devon said.

"And... no kids? That you know of?" I offered him a wink. It was stupid and puerile, but I was a little drunk.

"No, no kids. I'm not really... wired that way."

"Don't want any offspring? Well, I get that," I said. "My kids drive me crazy. Lucky for them, I love them like crazy, so it evens out."

"That's parenthood, I guess," Devon told me.

I swallowed from my glass. It was hard to keep the conversation going. He didn't seem interested in volunteering anything about himself – just as always, I thought; just as he'd been back in high school. But now, I thought, looking him over, I could sort of see why. I could see more of the pain in etched into his face, the sadness in his eyes.

"You still predict the future?" I asked him.

Devon actually laughed at that. "Not unless someone asks about it."

"Oh yeah? So, tell me... what are the shapes of things to come?" I'd heard that phrase somewhere before... in a TV ad or a movie, I wasn't sure. "And how accurate are you so far? I mean, did you predict 9/11?"

"I did," Devon said, his eyes fixed on the table. I noted he didn't have a drink.

"Why, my man, you're dry," I said. "Want me to get you a drink? I'm gonna need another in a minute..."

"Thanks, but no," Devon said. "I don't drink."

I downed half of what remained in my glass: Club soda and chap vodka. "Okay, so... did you really?"

"Did I really predict 9/11? Not predict in the sense of telling people about it," Devin said. "But I saw it coming... I mean, not the airliners hitting the World Trade Center. Not that. But I did see... I saw the way the government jumped on it, used it as an excuse to start a war, justify more and more spying on American citizens. And the way that the president at the time was a collaborator in terrorism."

"Oh, he was not," I said. I was no great fan of George W. Bush, but I knew this line was bull.

"I don't mean he was in league with the terrorists. I mean he used terror more or less the same way they did. He held the prospect of more attacks over the country as a reason to re-elect him... using fear as a weapon... getting what he wanted with it, even though he was a fool."

"He protected us," I said.

"By marching us into war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11," Devon said. "While billions of dollars vanished into thin air... I don't suppose his cronies in the oil business had anything to do with that."

"Well, why don't you look into your crystal ball, and you can tell me?" I asked.

"Not the way it works," Devon said.

"Of course not," I said. "It's all bits and pieces, right?"

"No, I can see it all very clearly," Devon told me. "But I see a narrow slice of the future, not the whole big canvas. I see dots and the lines that connect the dots, but I don't see every pixel in the movie."

"Ha," I said. "Some metaphor you got there."

"They carry torches in the streets," Devon said. "They chat about Jews. They invade towns they think are too liberal, pick fights with the locals... and the cops just watch. They take advantage of peaceful protests, smash into marchers with speeding cars... they take guns into situations that are intended to be peaceful, and they attack our capital."

"Who does all tis?" I asked. "Muslims?"

"No, not Muslims," Devon said. "But terrorists all the same. People like you. People afraid of Muslims, people afraid of... of everyone except who they see in the mirror."

"Nobody's going to attack D.C.," I told him.

"Not the city," he said. "The capital. The Capitol Building. "

"Oh, now, that's just..."

"You won't believe it until you see it," Devon said, staring past me. "And then you'll excuse it. And then worse things will come. Worse things... elections where people are gunned down. Mob violence. The same people who claimed Blacks were burning cities will start..." He laughed. "Burning cities." Devon looked at me, his eyes glinting, burning, furious. "It's all so goddamned stupid. And at the end of this road... a dictator. A new führer. And all those people who said it would never happen will just sit back – as long as it's not happening to them – and say it's okay. It's all okay."

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

"And it all starts just a few months from now," he said. "At the very last minute when the human race might have made a different choice. Might have corrected course; might have pulled back from the brink. But now. You're going to slam your foot on the gas and speed right over the cliff, laughing all the way down. Whoever survives the crash on the rocks below will just find new ways to blame the same old targets. Only this time... this time there won't be a light at the end of the tunnel. The piles of burning books won't signal anyone in the future that sanity should never be surrendered for the sake of a little nihilistic fun. In the end... ashes. Sand. Starvation. Orgy upon orgy of uniformed, body-armored pillage and brutality. Cops high-fiving militiamen and militias murdering people in the streets." He looked up at me, caught my skeptical smile. "And you're already approving of it."

"I don't believe it," I told him.

"But there it is," he said. "Hunger, disease, privation, grief. The cold consolation of a mass grave – if you're lucky. It's that or the dogs and rats that feed on human carrion in the streets of broken cities."

"You're nuts," I said.

"You're happy to look everywhere but right in front of you," he said. "You're happy to see everything except what's rushing at your face."

My drink was done; I got to my feet to get another. But then I lingered instead of walking away. "You're as crazy now as you were then," I snapped at him. "And anyway, who the hell are you to sit there laughing at everyone else? Maybe we are just foolish, stupid people, but who the hell are you? What gives you the right?"

"I'm not laughing, believe me," he said. "I'm trying not to c – "

His voice caught.

Cry? I wondered, mocking him in my thoughts. Trying not to cry, you lunatic?

" – care," he corrected himself. "Who am I? Just another body waiting to be crushed under the hooves of the bewildered human herd and its thoughtless waste of a history. What gives me the right to say anything about it? Or to resent it? To despise it? Just what we're talking about, that's what gives me the right: That I see it coming."

"Yeah? And how's that? What makes you so special?" I demanded.

"Only that I don't delude myself," Devon said, staring at me. His moment of near-tearfulness was gone now; he was back to his cold, contemptuous self.

"You know," I told him, feeling very drunk and very righteous, "I don't blame you for being fucked up. Dad kills mom, kills your whole family. But only after he spends years beating the shit out of you. That's gotta warp your perspective, right?"

"You've got a good memory," he said. "But not a good grasp of what it's been like. In case you're curious, it's all been one long repetition. Doesn't matter who's in charge, what authority they claim. It's all the same abuse, again and again. There were a few years, there... a few years when it seemed safe to hope, when the it felt like the sun was shining... but that's all. The fist of history is closing again, and here we are. Darkness falling. The future and the past the same game of rape and murder as they ever were."

I glanced into my empty glass, considered going after the ice. My head felt hot. Maybe the ice would cool me down. But I didn't do it; even in my drunkenness I remembered my dentist warning me not to chew ice. "Why did you even come here tonight?" I asked Devon.

"I don't know," he said. "Hoping I'd feel some affection for all of you. Hoping to see you were happy, maybe."

"What do you care if we're happy>?"

"Just that it's only going to get worse," he said. "Everything," he added, as if anticipating my next question. "And happiness... it's something we'll forget. Peace, safety, hope. A sense of giving something to our children. It's all disappearing. It's all about to be gone, and there's no getting it back. Ever."

"As if you know," I told him. "As if you have any kids to worry about. Well, I do: I have a son and two daughters."

Devon nodded, a strange, almost tragic smile on his lips. "Yes," he said. "Good luck to you."

"I'm leaving," I told him. "Fuck you for ruining my night."

"Goodbye," he said, without bitterness; without warmth; without inflection of any kind.

***

Seven months later my oldest daughter took part in a march on Washington. She made a "pussy hat" for the occasion. I worried for her.

Six years later, my oldest daughter marched again as the Supreme Court yanked away her right to control her own body.

That same month, my youngest daughter – angered by the Court's ruling – met with me for lunch, along with her twin brother. Over a Cobb salad, she told me that she was getting a hysterectomy.

"Why?" I asked her.

"I don't want to play along as the country rewards incels and rapists by forcing women to carry their babies," she told me. Then she took a deep breath. Her twin brother put a hand on her shoulder for strength and encouragement.

"Go ahead," my son told his sister. "Tell him."

"Tell me what?" I asked, my ears ringing with shock. What more could she have to say? What worse thing could there be then that she'd lost faith in her country to the point that she was deliberately making herself barren, shutting off any chance of ever giving me grandchildren?

"Dad, I'm... the hysterectomy isn't just because... I mean, I've been thinking about this for a long time."

"What? Why?"

"Because a womb... woman parts... this body is wrong for me."

"What?" I had no idea what she was saying.

She looked to her brother.

"Dad," he said gravely. "Don't you get it? Didn't you ever see? Hasn't it been obvious, like, forever?"

"What?" I asked, my voice louder than I intended.

"Dad, I know I'm a girl on the outside," my younger daughter told me. "But that's not really me. On the inside I'm..."

"He's my brother," my son told me.

"Who?" I still hadn't put it together. What close friend was my son referring to? Was he trying to tell me something impossible, too? Was he going to say that he was gay?

"Dad," my daughter said, drawing my attention back to her. "I'm not your little girl. I'm a man. Really and truly... inside myself... right in my soul... I'm your son."

I don't think I said anything at that point. I got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant. I don't think I even left any money to pay. It was a few days later that I accepted her call... his call, my other son... and heard what he was trying to tell me.

Two sons.

I have two sons... and a daughter.

It's been eight years since she – I mean, since he told me something I should have seen all along. Something I now realize I did see, sort of, but didn't want to see. Something I shut out of my consciousness, edited out of my perceptions, didn't want to know.

I've changed since then. The country, too, has changed... changed around me as I watched, in shock and confusion. The violence that broke out in 2024. The mobs that surged into the streets, guns blazing, when they didn't like the way the election went. Martial law. The military divided, American soldiers fighting American soldiers. States threatening to secede. The power struggle that followed. The single-term former president that tried to seize power, and the way he failed... and the people he inspired surging up in his wake, all claiming power and privileges that weren't theirs to take. But they took it all the same, clawing each other to shreds, mowing down the unlucky and the unprepared and those who objected...

The civil war that followed. They say it wasn't a civil war; they say we came close, but it didn't actually happen. But it did happen. I saw it. Houses in my neighborhood burning, bodies on the street right near my driveway. And the kill squads that executed my older daughter in public because, they said, she had once had an abortion. The kill squads that caused younger daughter... I mean, my son... to disappear for his own safety, on the run and sending intermittent word when he could, until... until he didn't anymore. Three years ago, the last of his messages reached me: A hopeful message, telling me he'd be home soon, that the country would soon be at peace again; he truly believed it would be...

And Russia, swooping in to take advantage of the country's disarray. Sabotaging our power grid with malware, electronically looting our financial institutions, flooding social media with fake news and propaganda. Annexing Alaska.

And China, imposing sanctions on us, telling us that the United States was now a failed state, an outlaw country.

And the dictator who finally took power in Washington and managed to hold onto it.

I think about Devon a lot now days. I tend to forget that last time I saw him on the street and come back, in my memory, to him alone in that big house at the age of 17. Or I come back to him alone at the table on that summer night in 2016, sitting in the dark, watching the revelry of our 20th reunion. I remember his predictions, the sorrow in his eyes, and I wonder why I didn't see what he saw, because he was right: It was there all along, the pieces of the future... the present, now... moving slowly into place, inexorable, ruthless, and blatant, there in plain sight for anyone to notice.

I think about my own foolishness, the fantasies I used to cling to – that it would all be fine; I didn't have to do anything special, the world would sort itself out. There were times I didn't even bother to vote. What was I thinking? Smug and ignorant, lulled by lies, distracted by trivialities, I... we, all of us... gave it all away: The country, our freedoms, the future. Oh, how I wish I had a voice now, a vote, a say in how my life is arranged, policed, and lived for me by those who are in charge.

But all such liberties are gone. Now I just go to work and keep quiet, each day a desperate game not to be noticed by the cops and, if I am, to have a wad of cash ready to surrender when they shake me down. To be poor... to have nothing in your pockets... is a criminal offense. That's the law of the streets. That's the only law that rules us now.

Still, I try to hold on to some semblance of hope for the future, and some fragment of who I used to be. A man. A free man. An American. A husband; a father; a member of a community, instead of a scurrying, fearful nobody... a moving target.

A father, yes. A father projecting his bloodline into the future, as ragged and wretched as the future might be. A father with... with...

Two sons, though it's illegal even to say so. And a daughter they stole from me.

Two sons and a daughter.

Next week Season 8 wraps up with a revisitation to a future where angry descendants of the reckless 21st century long to bring ecological perpetrators to their own time to face trial and punishment. Long at last, they succeed in their quest... but are they executing justice? Or an innocent scapegoat? More pressingly, have they forgotten the most crucial laws that govern humankind as well as the universe itself – the inviolable "First Principles?"