Brad Ferguson - The World Next Door

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“The World Next Door” by BRAD FERGUSON

Originally published in Asimov’s, August 1987

Duplication or redistribution of this file in any form whatsoever is strictly prohibited.

September 15

Jess told me today his sugar beet crop seems

to be doing pretty well. Time was when nobody

could get anything at all to grow, much less

something as tricky as sugar beets, so Jess

deserves a lot of credit ... and it'll be awful nice

to have real table sugar again, the white, grainy

stuff you could buy at the store. (What was it

called? Dominoes? Something like that.) We're

all sick of maple sugar, and the women say you

can't cook with it, except for ham — and we

don't have any pigs around here anymore. It

surprised me a little last spring, when the town

decided it wanted real sugar so bad, it allowed

Jess to turn two acres over to it. Jess raises some

of the best corn in the county, and we need all

we can get — the eating kind and the drinking

kind, both. But sugar is calories, too.

More dreams last night, the crazy kind a lot

of people around here have been having. Didn't

sleep all that well myself. Doc says it's more

wish-fulfillment stuff than anything else, like

right after the war. I don't know; these seem

different. I remember them better, for one thing.

I hardly ever remember dreams at all; now I can

remember whole bits of them — colors and

smells, too. In fact, in last night's dream I was

watching color television, but I forget what was

on.

September 18

A singer named Wanderin' Jake came

through today; he's from the Albany area. I

wrote his news on the chalkboard at Town Hall,

and the mayor's wife fed him well. The news:

There were floods in Glens Falls last month,

eleven people dead; there's a new provisional

state government in Rensselaer (that makes four

that I know of, if that preacher in Buffalo hasn't

been assassinated yet); the governor in

Rensselaer wants to send a state delegation to

next year's American Jubilee at Mount Thunder;

and there's been no word from an expedition

that set out six months ago from Schenectady,

bound for the atomic power plant at Indian Point

to see if it can be made useful again. The party

is presumed dead.

Wanderin' Jake led a sing-along in the

square just after sunset tonight, and we had a

good time, even though there wasn't much on

hand to picnic with and won't be until we get the

crops in. With this climate, we can't harvest

until maybe late October, and only then if we're

lucky and there's been no rain from the south.

Today I remembered that it was Domino

sugar, singular. There was a jingle about how

grandmothers and mothers know the best sugar

is Domino, which is how I remembered it. It's

strange how those jingles come back to haunt

you. Twenty-one great tobaccos make twenty

wonderful Kings. Let Hertz put you in the

driver's seat. I like Ike, you like Ike, everybody

likes Ike. And you get a lot to like with a

Marlboro.

September 25

The town got together tonight to discuss

what, if anything, we're going to do about the

American Jubilee. No decision, of course —

we've only talked it over once — but the thrust

of tonight's meeting was, the hell with

Rensselaer and the governor there, just like we

said the hell with the governors in Buffalo,

Syracuse and Watertown. What if Rensselaer

decides to tax us? We don't have the crops to

spare for taxes, and our town has been doing a

good job of hiding away nice and quiet in these

mountains.

I also asked if we were going to be doing

something about getting me a new typewriter

ribbon. The mayor says he wants typed minutes

— he says they mean we're still civilized and a

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Brad Ferguson - The World Next Door

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