life, Zhu marvels at Golden Gate Park, 1895. A wonderland!
Alphanumerics flicker in her peripheral vision. Muse downloads a file from the Archives stored in its memory. “The California Midwinter International Exposition was held here in 1894. This is what’s left. Over two million people attended the fair.”
“Two million?” Zhu is cautious after the monitor’s cool rebuke. “Is that a lot?”
“Oh, yes. The population of San Francisco then—I mean now—is three hundred thousand souls. Biggest city on the West coast. By our standards merely a neighborhood, right, Z. Wong?”
Zhu has no pat answer for the monitor’s flippant question. The number of people inhabiting any limited space is the biggest, thorniest problem facing her future.
Now Muse is amiable again, an eager tour guide in the wake of her silence. “The two million came from all over the country by train on the transcontinental railroad completed in the 1870s, transforming the Wild West into a desirable destination. The park itself is the result of John McLaren’s horticultural hand. Nothing but sand dunes here twenty years ago. McLaren discovered that Scotch sea-bent grass holds to the sand in ocean winds long enough to establish a subsoil in which other plants can thrive. Leave it to a Scot. Look lively, Z. Wong. Perhaps we’ll see Boss Gardener himself.”
“Oh!” Zhu looks around. Could the legendary John McLaren stroll right past her?
“The cosmicist owners of New Golden Gate Preserve revere McLaren. His love of ecosystem, his understanding of Nature, his perseverance and dedication.” There’s a smug tone in Muse’s whisper.
“Ah, yes, the cosmicists,” Zhu says. “How lovely. Only the cosmicists and their friends can enjoy this place in my time. Is it right that a public place as beautiful as this has been privatized and withheld from the people?”
“The people,” Muse says. “All twelve billion of them?”
Zhu ventures down a walkway leading into Concert Valley. “I thought the cosmicists believe in equal rights according to True Value. At least, that’s the line handed to me at the Luxon Institute of Superluminal Applications.”
“Equal rights?” Muse chuckles. “The cosmicists believe in equal sacrifice to the Great Good. Human interests don’t always take precedence over nonhuman interests. The hyperindustrial era and the Brown Ages taught us that lesson only too painfully. The cosmicists believe in privatizing natural resources when ‘the people’ can’t or won’t properly care for them.”
“Oh, I see,” Zhu says. “The cosmicists know better?”
“Well, yes. The Brown Ages were long before your time, Z. Wong. You have no notion of the devastation. Once the dome went up, no one was permitted into New Golden Gate Preserve. If it makes you feel any better, the cosmicists don’t spend time there, either. Nature has the place all to herself.”
The cosmicists. Guess who programmed Muse? Zhu sneezes more violently than before, tears welling in her eyes.
“That barnyard smell is from horse manure gathered by the street sweepers downtown,” Muse says wryly. “Boss Gardener has the stuff spread all over the grounds. Keeps the lawns so green.”
Boxwood and hydrangea border the walkway she strolls down. Now the De Young Art Museum stands to her left, the impression of Egyptian antiquity reinforced by two magnificent concrete sphinxes. In fact, the structure and its statuary were cobbled together in the months before the fair. There, the Temple of Music, a huge sandstone arch in the style of the Italian Renaissance, flanked by Corinthian columns. The medieval castle with unlikely Arabian arabesques is the Administration Building. At the center of the valley stands the Electric Tower, a smaller version of the Eiffel, adorned with international flags. The Bella Vista Café perches on the first mezzanine and a globe crowns the tower’s peak. A life-sized papier-mache California brown bear balances on the globe like a circus performer, the Bear Flag clutched in its paws. The tower is a tribute to the newfangled energy source and Mr. Edison’s electric light bulb.
Zhu won’t see many electric light bulbs during her t-port. In 1895, San Francisco is still mostly gas-lit.
She circles back. Tightrope walkers have strung a wire between two trees in front of the Temple of Music, cavort with parasols and chairs. A fellow with a bushy beard and a shiny top hat cracks his whip over a ring of pedestals as two lively hounds leap about, while a forlorn baboon in a yellow satin jacket deigns to perform a wobbly handstand.
A crowd promenades alongside Zhu in Concert Valley. The somber suits of the gentlemen are relieved by the pale pastel colors of the ladies’ sweeping dresses. Despite