Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies
This is the seventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator visits a streetcar factory, asks some hard questions about the use of human labor in place of machines, and gets some answers he doesn’t expect…
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The phone rang at 8 am sharp, a shrill mechanical sound that made me wonder if there was actually a bell inside the thing. I put down the Toledo Blade and got it on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Mr. Carr? This is Melanie Berger. I’ve got—well, not exactly good news, but it could be worse.”
I laughed. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s up?”
“We’ve managed to get everyone to sit down and work out a compromise, but the President’s got to be involved in that. With any luck this whole business will be out of the way by this afternoon, and he’ll be able to meet with you this evening, if that’s acceptable.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said.
“Good. In the meantime, we thought you might want to make some of the visits we discussed with your boss earlier. If that works for you—”
“It does.”
“Can you handle being shown around by an intern? He’s a bit of a wooly lamb, but well-informed.” I indicated that that would be fine, and she went on. “His name’s Michael Finch. I can have him meet you at the Capitol Hotel lobby whenever you like.”
“Would half an hour from now be too soon?”
“Not at all. I’ll let him know.”
We said the usual polite things, and I hung up. Twenty-five minutes later I was down in the lobby, and right on time a young man in a trenchcoat and a fedora came through the doors.
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