The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

“Not tepid. Violently opposed.”

“When you were so ‘violently opposed,’” Avery revised, “I cut the guest list to the bone. It’s only going to be Ryan and Lin Yu, Tom and Belle.”

“My, two out of the four I can actually stand. Good odds, as dinner parties go.”

“It’s in your interest to stay on Ryan’s good side. Mark Vandermire’s a passing clown who got lucky, and given your positions you were always going to hate each other. But Ryan is your boss.”

“He’s only head of the department, in defiance of my seniority, because he threatened to take his marbles to Princeton. They should never have capitulated to blackmail.”

“That’s because Ryan Biersdorfer is a rock star. Economics doesn’t have many rock stars, so you have to make nice.”

“Your husband’s not a rock star?” He’d have tried to say this lightly, but it came out wounded.

She looped her wrists around his neck, keeping her ginger-hairy hands from soiling his shirt collar. “My husband’s more like a jazz musician. Much more careless.”

Lowell left to check on the kids upstairs. Hopefully with that butt-patting banter and grousing about the guest list, he’d pulled off a reasonable facsimile of the grumpy yet affectionate husband on an ordinary Saturday evening when he wasn’t up for company. Everything he did and said lately felt fake—like cover, or distraction. Yet he did believe fiercely: this too shall pass, and more rapidly than anyone expected. Look at the Stonage: the country sprang right back. GDP took a hit in ’24, but the market recovered lickety-split. So: all that hair-tear for basically nothing. Same cycle, all over again.

He rapped on Savannah’s door, then poked his head in. “You consider joining the grown-ups tonight?”

“Nah.” His seventeen-year-old was sprawled on the bed, hunt-and-pecking on her fleX. Savannah was one of those girls who managed to make brown hair seem exotic. He trained his eyes away from her long bare legs; she was a knockout, she had powers, but he was her father. Which made him fortunate. He’d hate to be one of the teenage boys she turned to jelly. “I want to finish this application. I can ask Mojo for an omelet.”

“Better make it yourself. Mom’s turned Mojo off for the night. She didn’t want it to bury the guests in the backyard or something.”

“There’s a new Netflix series about that, you know. About a murderous Mojo run amok.”

“Oldest sci-fi plot in the book. Goes back to 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Savannah frowned. “Why would science fiction be set in the past?”

“Because when the novel was written, 2001 was in the future. Like 1984—which seemed far away when Orwell wrote it, but then the real 1984 came and went, and it wasn’t nearly as horrible or alien or sad as he predicted. Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present. They’re not about the future at all. The future is just the ultimate monster in the closet, the great unknown. The truth is, throughout history things keep getting better. On average, the world’s population has a higher and higher standard of living. Our species gets steadily less violent. But writers and filmmakers keep predicting that everything’s going to fall apart. It’s almost funny. So don’t you worry. Your future’s looking sunny, and it’ll only get sunnier.”

She looked at him with curiosity. “I wasn’t worried.”

Well, that makes you a colossal idiot popped into his head before he could stop the thought. “What’s the school?”

“Risdee. I can draw. But they want you more than anything to be able to talk about drawing. I’m not sure I’m so good at that.”

“Visual art stopped being about making anything a long time ago. It’s all about talking. The talking is what you make.”

“Doesn’t ‘visual’ art have to be something you see?”

“I guess text is something you see.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “Nobody at my school reads anything. They use ear buds, and get read to.”

“Sounds slow,” Lowell said glumly.

“It’s easy. It’s relaxing.”

“They do know how to read.”

She shrugged with a smile. “Not all of them.”

“You have to be able to read even to work for the post office.”

“Not really,” she said with an air of dreamy mischief. “Hand scanners can read aloud addresses, too. Careless, huh?”

Lowell rolled his eyes. “Good luck with the application.”

He shut the door. Not long ago, he’d been pleased that Savannah had fostered the marginally practical ambition to become a fabric designer, and of course she was pretty enough—no father was supposed to think this way anymore—that some guy was bound to scoop her up and take care of her come what may. But at this exact point in time, Lowell was leery of quite so airy-fairy a profession as crafting new prints when the world was already chockful of paisley. More pressingly still, last he checked a degree from the likes of the Rhode Island School of Design cost about $400,000—before room and board. The 529 Plan that Avery’s grandfather established when Savannah was born, meant to cover Goog’s and Bing’s higher education as well, was currently worth about ten cents.

When Lowell stopped by Goog’s room, Bing was on the bed, too. Indoorsy and pale, Goog managed to thrust his chest out when seated on a pillow with his back to the bedstead. Didn’t a normal fifteen-year-old slump? As ever, his chestnut hair was neat, his clothing tidy. The boy seemed always to be putting himself forward for inspection, and Lowell worried that the kid conceived of himself too much in relation to adults.

They both clammed up when their father made his appearance. But if they were up to something, Lowell would hear about it. Goog had the same garrulous, eager-to-please, desperate-to-impress quality that he had evidenced from the moment he learned to talk. He couldn’t keep a secret for five minutes. Bing could—but for all the wrong reasons. Soft and a touch overweight, their ten-year-old was chronically frightened. He’d make ideal prey for pedophiles: warned that if he blabbed he’d get into terrible trouble, Bing would hush-hush the story with him to the grave.

“You boys planning to stay upstairs tonight? Because you can come down and join us if you want. Though I’m not sure Mom has quite enough fish.”

“Oh, yuck!” they said in unison. They didn’t realize it, but given the outlandish prices and poor availability of anything but the farmed varieties, which tasted like pond scum, these boys had been trained to hate fish.

“Mom said we could have grilled cheese,” Bing said.

“Who’s coming?” Goog asked.

“Mom’s friend Belle Duval—you remember, the cancer doctor—”

“Oncologist,” Goog corrected scornfully.

“The oncologist.” God forbid you should insult Goog’s vocabulary. “Her husband, Tom Fortnum, is a lawyer with the Justice Department. Also, my colleague Ryan Biersdorfer and the woman he lives with, Lin Yu.”

Goog squinted. “The guy who did that ten-part documentary on inequality.”

Lowell’s middle child was keenly alert to the proximity of fame and influence. It required an unearthly maturity to keep from getting irked that the kid’s celebrity radar didn’t blip around his own father. Hadn’t Dad been on TV, too?

“What made Ryan’s name was a book, believe it or not. One of the last big bestsellers. It predicted that American low-skilled wages will soon be so abysmal that the Chinese will outsource their jobs to us.” Lowell tried to discipline the derision from his voice. “One of the things that makes an economist popular with regular people is a proclivity for hyperbole. Which means …?”

“A tendency to exaggerate,” Goog said promptly. “But how could you get more hyperbolic than what’s really happened? Olivia Andrews has taken a leave of absence from school because her father shot himself in their kitchen. I don’t think you guys have been exaggerating enough.”

“Sounds like you two should come downstairs, then. Join the conversation.”

“I don’t wanna listen to a bunch of economy stuff,” Bing said.

“Then maybe you were born into the wrong family.”

“Yeah. Prolly was.”

“Tonight, Bing?” Lowell said. “I’m with you. You guys stay up here, I might sneak away and join you. Ryan is a bigmouth showoff. I bet you know the type at school. When you grow up, nothing changes.”

He turned toward the door, but Goog piped up, “Dad, can I ask you a question?”