She opened her mind to Luciente and waited. Nothing happened. Time crawled like ants over her clenched eyelids and nothing stirred. Hey, Luciente! she thought. Oye, where the hell are you? Don’t shut me out! She imagined Luciente in bed with … Bee?

A sluggish presence eventually touched her. “Mmmm, it’s me–Luciente. A moment.”

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not expecting you … silly with wine and marijuana. Wait. Will clear and return.” The contact faded.

Guiltily she turned on her cot Butting into Luciente’s pleasure. At the same time a dour envy lapped her mind. Saturday night was a big night everywhere, even in the future. Everybody was having a good time, everybody in the world, in the universe, everybody but her, alone and bored. Everybody was loving everybody else, everybody was drinking wine and smoking dope and dancing and sitting on each other’s laps and whispering in each other’s ears. Everybody was kissing their children good night and tucking them in and going back to the guests at the long table laid out with the remains of roast suckling pig, lechуn asado, as at Dolly’s wedding, everybody but her.

“Here I am,” Luciente said. “Come through now. I’m coning.”

“Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. Go back to your party.”

“Why shouldn’t you come? I didn’t think of it, but … why not? Everybody here says it would be lovely to invite you.” Luciente gave what felt like an abrupt impatient brutal tug on her and she was clutching Luciente by the upper arms and standing in a warm night lit by floating bulbs a few feet over their heads, lights like big pastel fireflies, some steady, some winking on and off as fireflies do, but all with that cool light.

A rabble of kids ran by screaming and laughing, carrying streamers that clittered and clattered in the noise of their running, children in bright butterfly costumes with their faces painted. Two dogs chased them, barking, one with ribbons plaited into its high plumy tail.

“We’re entertaining Cranberry. We won a decision about the dipper routes.”

She stepped back to examine Luciente, who was wearing a backless dress of a translucent crimson chiffon that tied behind her neck. The skirt was cut diagonally, quite short on one side and medium length on the other. “I’ve never seen you in a dress.”

“It’s my flimsy for the evening–Jackrabbit designed it … . A flimsy is a once‑garment for festivals. Made out of algae, natural dyes. We throw them in the compost afterward. Not like costumes. Costumes circulate–like the robe Bee wore for naming? Costumes you sign out of the library for once or for a month, then they go back for someone else. But flimsies are fancies for once only. Part of the pleasure of festivals is designing flimsies–outrageous, silly, ones that disguise you, ones in which you will be absolutely gorgeous and desired by everybody in the township!”

“That must be what yours is for.”

Luciente threw up her hands. “At a festival, why not be looked at?”

“What about me? Can you dress me up?”

“I don’t have a flimsy for you.” Luciente looked grief‑stricken. Then she snapped her fingers. “All is running good. You put on Red Star’s flimsy. Red Star ordered it but that person had an accident picking cherries and is healing at Cranberry. We’ll get per flimsy from the presser for you.”

Luciente scooped her along and they dodged through groups wandering the paths of the village, people in wild and bright, in delicate and fanciful flimsies, carrying wine bottles and passing joints and eating small cakes that left a scent of spice on the air, trailing flowers in leis and in hair and beards, playing on flutes and recorders and guitars and stringed instruments strange and twangy, high and shimmery in their sound, beating on drums and sets of drums and carrying along objects that sputtered sound and light and scent.

The rooms of the children’s house glittered and footsteps echoed down the stairways, laughter and shrieking flew out of every crevice. Adults and children in their flimsies played a game of catch with floating objects that moved in slow‑motion S’s. In a room full of tools and devices Luciente addressed a machine. “Produce the flimsy ordered by Red Star.”

Out of the slot a garment slowly protruded, like a paper towel feeding itself from a roll. Luciente grabbed it and shook it out. “Here! Put it on.”

“Here?” She glanced at the busy hall.

“I’ll turn my back,” Luciente said with exaggerated patience, and shrugged to the walls.

The garment was a jiggling thing made of small bubbles, weightless and loosely bound together so that they swayed and bounced and gathered the light as she moved. The garment lay lightly upon her shoulders but did not touch her body elsewhere. She felt very naked under it.

“That’s clever.” Luciente eyed the flimsy, circling her. “Marvelous the way it shivers and moves. You backed into luck.”

“It isn’t … transparent?”

“Transparent? Hardly at all. Come!”

In the fooder many of the panes had been removed so the breeze off the river could blow through the dining room, where small groups still sat picking at the remains of the meal, gossiping and smoking and drinking. One table was singing together in a foreign language, beating time on the tabletop.

“What did you have?” she asked with the passion for food of the institutionalized.

“Would you like leftovers? Of course. I’ll set up a plate.”

A cold cucumber soup flavored with mint. Slices of a dark rich meat not familiar to her in a sauce tasting of port, dollops of a root vegetable like yams but less sweet and more nutty–maybe squash? Luciente had told her they bred squashes here. A salad of greens with egg‑garlic dressing. Something rubbery, pickled, hot as chili with a strange musky taste. Young chewy red wine.

“Remember, this won’t nourish you,” Luciente said mournfully, stealing a taste from her plate. “The bread is gone. We bake it fresh daily. Was a graham fruit bread and every bit was gobbled.”

“Who cooks? What is this meat?” she asked between bites.

“Roast goose. We take turns. Hawk–the person who was Innocente, remember?–and I spit‑roasted the geese. By rotation every night we have a chef and four assistants.”

“Who cleans up?”

“Mechanically done. Nobody wants to wash dishes.”

“In my time neither. Does it really work?”

“Better than people, more patient. For washing dishes, we are willing to spend precious energy.”

“Couldn’t a machine cook too?”

“Fasure. But not inventively. To be a chef is like mothering: you must volunteer, you must feel called. Myself, I have no gift and only help in the kitchen. But Bee is a chef and at the next feast, person will make the menu and direct–the feast of July nineteenth, date of Seneca Equal Rights Convention, beginning women’s movement. Myself, I play Harriet Tubman. I say a great speech–Ain’t I a woman?–that I give just before I lead the slaves to revolt and sack the Pentagon, a large machine producing radiation on the Potomac–a military industrial machine?”

“Oh, is that how it happened?” she said. “In what century was that battle?”

“Grasp, that’s the essence of it. History gets telescoped a little. The kids get restless if the ritual runs too long. They like best the part where they sack the Pentagon. Everybody joins in and then at the bottom are little honey cakes with quotes from revolutionary women baked in them and stories of their lives, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Then we all go party.”

“That’s only two weeks away. Do you have a big holiday every two weeks?”

“We have around eighteen regular holidays, maybe another ten little ones, and then the feasts when we win or lose a decision and when we break production norms. We like holidays–a time to remember heroines and heros, to loose tensions, to have a good time, to praise the history that leads to us–”