The Voice of New Rochelle: Looking Back at the Future

March 21, 2212, started out like any other day in New Rochelle. 

Commuters made their way downtown on the electric sidewalks to catch the turbo-unitram into New York City. Travelers wondered out loud at the quiet efficiency of the tramcars, riding on a bed of air, propelling them to midtown Manhattan in less than eight minutes. 

One by one, riders quickly passed through an archway that read the tiny chip, no bigger than a freckle, imbedded in the fatty part of their palms, deducting fares and identifying preferences for news access. Instantly, audio and video with the latest stories were sent to the virtual reality contact lenses (Visilens) and micro-auditory sensors that replaced the smartphones and PDA devices of a bygone era. 

As the tram eased out of the station, before it kicked into full thrust, the people sitting on the left side of the train looked out furtively at the robot-cops armed with electro-pulse rifles who stood guard on the south side of the platform. The good news is that the fancy weaponry is non-lethal even as it can totally incapacitate the target. The bad news is that the south and east ends of city have become a wasteland, known as Echo Town. 

Here outlaws rule the old streets of the waterfront, even as they are consigned to a life with debilitating lung ailments and an early death, courtesy of the toxic shores neglected for more than two centuries. Waves of green foam lap up against the tar blackened coast, serving as an endless reminder of opportunity lost. 

On this day the City Council will listen to the 347th presentation by a developer intent on renewing the waterfront. The members of the council have tuned their Visilenses into the Council Chamber Meeting application, a program that enables them to ask questions and vote by simply thinking willfully. Yet, most of those assembled are doing other things. One is planning his daughter’s wedding using his lens’s split-screen application, while another is designing her new kitchen on a different thought-to-reality program. None of them expects to make any progress.  

They will listen. They will nod their heads. They will even ask a question or two.  In the end, they will do nothing. They suffer from a malady of long standing. It is called DIDS, or Davids Island Disorder Syndrome. The illness was added to the list of psychiatric diseases about a hundred years ago. The symptoms include the inability to make a decision and a pathological distrust of all data and those persons providing it. Indeed, the signs mimic those of dogs in an experiment done long ago whereby there is neither reward nor punishment for their efforts. Soon, the dogs curl up in a corner, the victims of learned helplessness. 

As the meeting went forward, so too did the litany of entrenched, unmovable positions held by the city’s residents. The folks in the downtown wanted retail before there were customers. Others wanted customers before there was retail. Some folks wanted big buildings, while others clamored for small ones. 

This one wanted a park while the other guy wanted a think tank. No one believed in any study that wasn’t done by themselves, and the mayor was too smart for his own good.   

“Not in my backyard,” said the rich. “Over my toxic body,” said the middle class.” 

Virtual tours of the radiation plumes at Echo Bay are available on your Visilens.