“Do you want to add a little message for the legislators?”
What do you mean?
“To say what actions you want them to take?”
His puzzled look turned to distress. If his own father was so blindly stupid, what hope was there for the world? I just want to stop the killing.
I knew it was asking for trouble, but I let his slogan ride. help me. i’m dying. Who knew what might move a stranger? After months of neural feedback, his empathy was surpassing mine. He and I would learn together how to enter the world that his mother had lived in like a native.
Dad? When will everyone be there?
“Who?”
The governor and the senators and the assembly people. Maybe those Supreme Court guys? I want as many of them as possible to see me.
“Weekday mornings, probably. But you can’t miss any more school.”
Inga doesn’t even go to school anymore. She says why bother to study how to live in a future that—
“I’m familiar with Inga’s ideas about education.”
We made a deal with Dr. Lipman and his teacher, Kayla Bishop. Robin would keep up on his homework, and he’d do an oral report on his experiences at the Capitol when he got back to school the next day.
He dressed up. He wanted to wear the blazer he’d worn to his mother’s funeral, but after two years, putting it on was like squeezing a butterfly back into the chrysalis. I made him wear layers; any kind of weather could blow in over the lake that time of year. He wore an oxford shirt, a clip-on tie, slacks with a crease, a sweater vest, a windbreaker, and boy’s dress shoes that shone from long polishing.
How do I look?
He looked like a tiny god. “Commanding.”
I want them to take me seriously.
I drove him downtown to the narrow isthmus between the lakes, where the Capitol sat like the center of a compass rose. Robin rode in the back seat, holding his poster on its foam-board handle across his lap. The act required his full attention. At the Capitol, a guard showed him where he could stand, off to the side of the south wing stairs leading to the senate. Relegation to the periphery of the steps upset him.
Can’t I stand up by the doors so people see me on their way inside?
The guard’s No left him grim but resolute. We headed to the area of confinement. Robin looked around, surprised at the sedate midmorning. Government employees drifted up the steps in dribs and drabs. A group of schoolchildren listened to their docent before touring the corridors of power. A block away on Main and Carroll, desperate pedestrians prowled the shops for caffeine and calories, picking their way through the many homeless people of all races. People who looked like elected officials but were probably lobbyists walked past, intent on the voices pressed to their ears.
The stillness confused Robin. Nobody else is protesting anything? Everyone in the state is perfectly happy with everything just the way it is?
He’d based his idea of this place on video clips of his mother. He wanted drama and showdown and righteous calls for justice from concerned citizens. Instead, he got America.
I took my place alongside him. He erupted. His free hand slashed the air. Dad! What do you think you’re doing?
“Doubling the size of your protest group.”
No. Freaking. Way. Go stand over there.
I walked thirty feet down the pavement. He waved me farther off.
Over there. Far enough that no one thinks you’re with me.
He was right. The two of us standing together would look like an adult put-up job. But a nine-year-old standing alone with a sign reading help me i’m dying might be something you’d want to stop and talk over.
I relocated, as far off as I was comfortable going. We didn’t need a well-meaning passerby calling Dane County Human Services. Satisfied, Robin picked up his painted sign and held it in the air. Then the two of us settled into the trenches of Earthly politics.
I’VE WAITED AT THE BASE OF THOSE STAIRS more times than I can remember. I’d meet Alyssa there, after she’d testified on bills that few people in the state would ever hear of. Often she was pleased with her day’s work, sometimes elated, but never entirely satisfied. Coming down the steps, she’d wrap herself around me, dead with fatigue. She’d hold tight to my ribs and say, It’s a start.
Eventually her turf expanded to include nine more Capitols. She traveled more and lobbied less, training others to do the testifying. But as I watched her son work the steps where Alyssa had so often battled against Things as They Are, I got turned around in time. The books in my sprawling science fiction library agreed: Time travel was not just possible. It was obligatory.