(All characters are at least 18 years of age.)
(This is a work of fiction; any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.)
(27 Oct 2020 Update: Added Prologue)
PROLOGUE
The plane banked sharply as the pilot lined up for Chicago Midway airport. This would have been unusual until a few years ago, for an overseas flight like this one, but O'Hare's international terminal still looked like a crater, despite an ongoing reconstruction project extending into its second year. Inside the wide-body Airbus A430, cabin lights were gradually illuminating.
The gray-haired man in 21F was still asleep. Odette, a twenty-nine-year-old flight attendant assigned to the Business Class section, shook his shoulder gently. He had extended his seat to its fully reclined, lay-flat position and she could hear him snoring softly. She had been doting on him throughout the flight, at least when he was awake; he had slept much of the seven hour flight from London. He did not look anywhere near his sixty-five years; she only knew his real age from the passenger manifest. She liked his angular, lined face, suggestive, no doubt incorrectly, of a life spent on a cattle ranch. It helped that he still had a nice ass, for a man of his advanced age. Odette was an avid connoisseur of that part of the male anatomy.
"Sir, we're landing in about forty minutes," she informed the groggy passenger.
Bleary eyed, the man barely registered her words. Over the intercom, the captain was thanking everyone for flying with British Atlantic Airways and expressing her deepest wish that the airline be considered for future travel plans.
The precious sleep that had just been interrupted was the first he had had in over twenty-four hours. Entering the United States from any foreign country, even the United Kingdom, required a two week period of daily, supervised medical tests. One of the few exceptions was in the event of a death in the family. Sadly, that was the justification for the man's rushed return to the Midwest. Even with digitally signed affidavits from his family's attorney in Wisconsin, he had found it hard to get the special exam that was required in the case of flying on short notice.
London was practically one big city-wide rave right then, celebrating what was already being called Reunification Day. Scotland was rejoining the UK, and the UK, not coincidentally, was rejoining the European Union. Local hospitals were running on short staff, while at the same time seeing an increase in emergency room visits due to the widespread revelry. Finding a doctor to perform a medically unnecessary battery of tests, even if for a good reason, required visiting multiple facilities, scattered across the city, as well as a fair deal of begging and pleading. There had been no time to get any sleep.
Fifty-five minutes after being woken up, the man was following a blue arrow leading down the right-hand aisle of the aircraft. The arrow was superimposed onto his vision by his contact lenses, and was leading him out onto the jetway. Odette watched his retreating figure approvingly. His trousers were snug. She liked that, especially since, in her opinion, he still had the figure to get away with it. She briefly thought of her husband and how nice it would be if he would focus more on that part of his body, instead of largely pointless, to her mind, chest and arm exercises.
The man was directed to a large room containing a number of tall machines, each about the size and shape of an adult human. They were spaced at eight foot intervals and looked like they belonged in an optometrist's office. He went to the first unoccupied unit and positioned his face in front of a retinal scanner. Several questions from Customs and Immigration floated in front of him, all of which he answered silently, with a series of eye motions.
The next step was a medical scan. He had to wait about seventy minutes for this part. A line of other recently-disembarked passengers extended deep into a maze-like, two-story structure, designed to allow large crowds of people to maintain a safe distance from each other at all times. When the man finally reached the end of the queue, and entered the glass-and-metal enclosure of the test booth, he smiled wryly. How ironic it would be if the apparatus were to find anything wrong with him! His own company had designed one of its subcomponents, a set of laser scanners that could detect variations in body temperature across the entire body, even through clothing. Unsurprisingly, to him at least, none of the tests found anything that would have flagged him for an exam, and he continued on to baggage claim where he gathered up a solitary rolling suitcase.
He had opted to take an Uber to downtown Milwaukee; it was cheaper and easier than a connecting flight. Still following the blue line on the ground, he walked mechanically until he arrived at a long row of identical grey cars. The one that would take him to his hotel glowed, only for him, with a faint gold aura, and both its trunk and gull-wing doors opened automatically as he approached. There was no driver. It whisked silently away as soon as he was settled in.
Once the vehicle began to ascend a freeway on-ramp, he saw the familiar, non-blockable message swim before his eyes, informing him that the motorway was suitable for autonomous vehicles only. The fine for violations was $11,250. He cast his mind back to the last human-operated car he had ever owned. It had been sold, for a small fortune, just over four years earlier. Thinking about it now, in part because of the reason for his premature return to Milwaukee, made his eyes well up with tears. The red letters of the warning blurred in front of him.
Forty-three minutes later, his taxi pulled up in the Hyatt Regency's valet parking zone. It still bore that name, although it was rarely used for that purpose any longer. He alighted from the vehicle and passed through one set of sliding glass doors. Here he stood briefly in front of a machine that took his temperature. The inner doors opened, and the omnipresent blue line now lead towards a bank of elevators. Ignoring this, he followed a green-colored offshoot that would take him to the woman. She was waiting for him at a small table in the hotel lounge, Bar 333.
The woman was dressed in a black pantsuit. She was tall, with shoulder length, wavy gray hair, parted slightly off-center. Despite eschewing make-up, she looked to be in her mid-fifties, well below her actual age, and well-preserved at that. Her statuesque figure still regularly drew attention from strangers of both genders. On her face, today, was etched a look of ineffable sadness.
The man came up to her and they embraced, hugging each other firmly. Both began to cry, and stood there for several minutes, ignoring sideways glances from wait staff and other patrons. After separating from her at last, the man wheeled his rolling suitcase next to a dark grey duffel bag lying near her feet. They both sat down and held hands across the small table. A waitress, who had been hovering nearby, materialized next to them to take their order. They requested two gin and tonics, and a Caesar salad with grilled salmon to share.
Neither had much to say. Both knew the recently departed, who had been both her spouse and his business partner, as well as they could know anyone. In any case, the two had been in near constant contact, electronically, for the past two days. The man had even been sharing his location and vital signs with her. Even over the Atlantic, the plane had forwarded along his biometric information, regularly, to satellites far overhead, and from there it reached her through an online service. Because she found it comforting, she had set up a visual representation of his heart rate, to be displayed at all times, save for those few hours when she tried to get some sleep herself. It manifested as a faint red halo at the periphery of her vision, intensifying and fading in time with his pulse.
"Has it gotten any easier?" the new widow asked after some time, "It hasn't, for me." He was a widower, and had been for five years. She was asking about the man's spouse, whom she had also known well.
"Not much better for me, either; still feels like yesterday," the man said sadly, then added, "Every time I hear 'Little Red Bird', I fucking lose it."
The man started to tear up, just at the mention of the Dave Matthews Band.
"Fuck," he said.
They had been holding hands across the table, and the widow now squeezed the widower's hands supportively. He squeezed back and reined in his tears. The food and drinks arrived shortly after that, providing a welcome distraction for the next twenty minutes. The pair then headed up to the widower's hotel room.