Mother's Day

The fog was lifting slowly and, as it seemed, from a great distance away. The bed was soft, the lighting subdued, the room tastefully furnished and reassuringly normal. Everything was wrong.

"Well, good morning, dear!" came the homey voice, pitched slightly higher than the auditory comfort zone. "Awake at last! And just in time for Mother's Day, too."

"Where am I?" I blubbered tritely. "What's going on? Why do I sound like a refugee from a bad rip-off of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?"

"Maybe you are in a bad rip-off of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," replied the voice. I now saw that it belonged to a matronly old woman with the most sympathetic eyes I had ever seen. "And perhaps 'When am I?' is the more pertinent question, but I will answer all of your questions as best I can. I hope you will be able to answer some of mine, as well. You're in the Bush Psychiatric Hospital in Austin, Texas. Tradition says it was named after its most famous inmate, but I don't remember anything like that. And my name is Angie, by the way. I'm a volunteer here."

"Psychiatric?" I peeped.

"Relax, dear," said Angie. "We don't think you're ... you know ... but you've been through a rather extraordinary ordeal, and we just figured that this might be the best place for you. For now."

Memory came flooding back. "Iraq!" I cried. "The Surge!"

"We thought as much," smiled Angie. "Iraq is where they found you. Dr. Lewis said she thought you were from that time."

"I remember! There was an IED ..."

"An IUD?" blurted Angie. "What on earth were you doing with an IUD?"

"No, no," I stammered, eager to explain. "An IED! An Improvised Explosive Device!"

"Oh," she said. "A bomb."

"No," I explained patiently. "Bombs are what we dropped on the bad guys. Bombs are ... authorized. They're ... legitimate. They're ... expensive. An IED is a sneaky terrorist device used for evil purposes. And it doesn't cost much money."

"Well, I'm not sure I follow your logic, dear," said Angie, "but please go on."

"It ... exploded," I whispered. "That's all I remember."

"There, there, dear," said Angie soothingly. "We think we know what happened next. You were blown into the middle of next week, as the saying goes. Except that it was 50 years, rather than a week."

"That's preposterous," I replied.

"Yes, it is," she admitted. "But it's the best I can do on short notice. Maybe the ... 'device' was nuclear. They used to have freak nuclear accidents with preposterous consequences about every other day. According to the movies of the period, at least. In any case, the Iranians dug you out of a sand dune."

"The Iranians!" I cried, alarmed. "The dastards! Am I a prisoner, then?"

"Oh, no, dear. It was a geological survey team. They were very sympathetic, and sent you home as soon as they could identify you as American. Iran is our good friend now."

"Then ... then ... we won the war?" I concluded, weighing the evidence.

"Won?" Angie looked at me oddly. "Well, ... the war was successfully concluded, if that's what you mean."

That sounded awfully weasely to me.

"We don't have wars anymore," she added.

"What year is it?" I asked.

"2057, dear," said Angie gently. "Really."

"No wars?" I asked skeptically. "And what about all that other stuff, like ..."

"Global Warming?" she suggested. "Oh, we've got it, all right. But we've managed to mitigate its worst effects. After we kicked the oil habit."

"Kicked the oil habit?" I repeated stupidly.

"Oh, we do still use petroleum to make plastic, dear. But we found solar technologies so much nicer for everything else."

"How...?" I was losing coherence. My head was starting to spin.

"Why don't you just relax a bit and enjoy the Mother's Day festivities?" Angie suggested, clicking on a very normal looking TV. A huge party was going on somewhere, and some woman was giving a speech.

"Mother of the Year?" I suggested.

"President Hutchings, dear," she said softly.

"A woman ... We have a woman President?" I gasped incredulously.

"Of course," she said. "The President is always a woman."

"You know," I said uncertainly, "this doesn't look much like the Mother's Day I remember. The one with gooey greeting cards, flowers, and taking mom out to eat?"

"Oh, yes, dear," said Angie. "A few things have changed since your day."

She tapped her name tag, which I had not noticed until then, with something approaching pride. After her name, it said, "M.F.A."

"Um, Master of Fine Arts?" I asked, nonplussed.

"Master of ...?" She looked at me quizzically. "Oh! I see. I guess they do have academic degrees like that, dear, but that's not what this 'M.F.A.' stands for. I'm retired now, of course, and just do volunteer work, but I was a charter member of the Mothers' First Airborne."

"The what?" I choked.

"Parachuted into DC back in Aught 7 and yanked those bastards off their fat keisters of power," she said. "Dear."

"A ... a ... coup d'etat?" I stammered. "You participated in a coup d'etat? That's treason!"

"I think you've got the treason on the wrong foot, dear," Angie smiled. "We were out of Iraq in a month, by the way."

"But ... our system of government," I protested. "What happened to that?"

"We certainly brought in a different system of government, all right," she admitted. "One in which people elect representatives who serve the interests of the people."

"But ... but ...," I stammered, "what about ..."

"What about corporations, you mean, dear? We still have them, of course. They sell goods and services. They just don't run the world anymore. We had to revoke quite a few charters to regain control. Small price."

"But you can't do that," I sputtered.

"Sure, we could," she replied. "Corporations have always existed by the will and on the sufferance of the people. We just forgot that for a while."

"But, but ..."

"Do we still have greedy bastards, dear? Is that what you're asking? Of course, we do. But we don't let them make public policy."

"Aren't men allowed to be President anymore?" I sobbed.

"Allowed?" Angie looked puzzled. "Well, of course, they're allowed. It's just that no one would vote for a man."

"Why not?" I wailed.

"I should think it would be obvious, dear," she replied. "They're unelectable."