The new song by John Mellencamp came on the radio as I surfed the ‘net looking for Christmas gifts. I went to the family gift list page, and clicked on the link for Peter’s list. I sat back while the page loaded, slowly due to the probable heavy load on our service provider’s servers. While I waited, memories of my life in California rose unbidden to my mind.
Thirty-one years, almost thirty-two. I had just turned 49, and was dreading the big 5-0 . . . especially after the party Micky had planned for Peter when he’d turned 50 six years prior. We were all still living in the Pad and Isa’s Pad. En and Micky shared Isa’s place with her and Mike. Peter and I shared the Pad with Danni and her husband Chris. We’d had our ups and downs but right now, coming up on Christmas 1998, everyone was happy and healthy.
Isa and I both still wrote, her having just sold her first fiction novel and I was hard at work on a script for Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Instead of the manual typewriters we both had brand new computers: a Dell running Windows 95 for me, a nice fast Macintosh for her. I’d come full circle -- just before landing in the past the Graduate College where I worked at school had purchased several new Dells, and many had been added to the new computer lab. I had email . . . lenoradolenztork@hotmail.com -- what irony. We’d all chipped in to put together a website, which I ran -- after I relearned HTML, of course. Even with my memory, I wasn’t able to remember HTML after not seeing or using it for three decades. We now had a domain, http://www.monkees.com, and we’d secured the rights to monkees.net and monkees.org -- both of which redirected to monkees.com. There were pages about the band, which was completely intact after thirty-one years, and still making records. No big successes but we’d toured the world and sold a decent number of LPs, 45s, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, and CDs. Each of us had a personal homepage, with our own interests. I wrote everything that was on the domain -- no one else had tried to learn HTML, even Micky -- he could easily have pulled the knowledge from my mind through the still-strong link but he refused to. He used email, he typed up his scripts on the computer, but that was as far as he would go.
I thought about Peter, my husband of the past twenty-eight years. My love for him was still strong. Last year, Mike and Isa had separated briefly after Mike had an affair while on tour. En and Micky had argued about him wanting her to stay at home during our tour of Africa in 1996, concerned about her safety. Danni and Chris had fought constantly earlier that year, but were back together. Good thing too, I thought. I don’t think I could take him moping around and sleeping on the couch any longer! But Peter and I had never fought over anything more than minor disagreements over song arrangements, what to make for breakfast, or other little things like that. Never.
The page loaded and I scanned his list. We always had trouble buying for each other, until I wrote a special CGI program that each of us could access and enter items we wanted for our birthdays or Christmas, which then were added to a page. Seeing "a new bass to replace the one that’s falling apart", I noted that down on my Starfleet notepad and continued to scroll. After scribbling down a few gifts I looked at the system tray and saw that it was time to eat. I closed the Internet connection and cleared the cache and History list -- I didn’t want anyone to know I had been Christmas gift shopping.
I stuck a frozen pizza in the microwave, then poured a Pepsi. I sat down at the table and ate . . . letting my mind wander back through time as I did.
So much had happened in thirty years. I had left my previous world behind . . . and I didn’t regret it one bit. All of us had married . . . none had children, however, since our powers rendered us sterile. Chris hadn’t had powers when Danni met him but shortly after their wedding, on their honeymoon cruise to the Bahamas, they’d fallen overboard and been lost in the Bermuda Triangle. When they emerged, Chris had powers -- elastics. He’d been exposed to radiation while they were lost.
The seventies had been dry years for us. Disco was the craze, and we didn’t do disco. I had never been able to stomach it much, except for a couple of Bee Gees songs from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack that I’d grown up with. Mike preferred country-rock, Peter liked folk, Micky liked rock ‘n roll and blues, and Danni loved Broadway. None of us could write a decent disco song so we kept getting turned down for gigs. Thankfully, Isa was still writing her articles and I was selling novels at a good pace so between our writing sales and good budgeting we managed. When eighties music came around, Peter and Micky were able to adapt enough so that we could record and sell an album, "Pool It" and tour briefly in the mid-eighties.
Now in the nineties we were doing much better. There had been a revival of "oldies" music and we were able to tour extensively in the early part of the decade. Many sixties groups were disbanded and so we were asked to do an "oldies" tour, playing our own songs and those of groups like Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Big Brother & The Holding Company, and the Beatles. Mike had bitched about losing our integrity but Micky, Peter and I enjoyed the chance to perform songs we loved. Peter and I especially just loved the opportunity to make music -- no matter whose. I think that’s part of why we’re still together, our mutual interests.
Our recent album World Wide Monkees was still selling like hotcakes two years later. I looked up and smiled at the sight of the two gold albums hanging above the front door. One for World Wide Monkees, one for our fifth album, Changes, which had been the first album released after Davy became Danni. Since we had gotten five copies of each -- one gold record for each member of the band, we’d hung one above the door in each Pad, and the other three hung in Danni and Chris’ room, Mike and Isa’s room, and Micky and En’s room. Peter and I had so much stuff on our walls there was no room. We were happy to see the records above the door every day, and kept our myriad drawings, book covers, posters, photos, and sheet music hanging up on our bedroom walls.
Success wasn’t easy. I had forgotten most of my previous life but one thing bugged me -- we were never as successful musically as the Monkees in that dimension. I had wondered why on many occasions. Was it because I was in the band? Was it the fact that we weren’t on television, with that medium pushing record sales over the top? Was it because we weren’t on the Colgems label but on a smaller label instead? I had never answered those questions, and never would.
I sighed, draining my Pepsi and putting my empty dish in the sink before pouring more Pepsi and heading back to the computer. I opened the file for my latest novel. But I couldn’t concentrate -- the song had opened up a floodgate of memories. I moved to the black chaise and laid down. The chaise was my second favourite resting spot, after a spot about five feet in the air above the chaise and a little to the side of it, floating on a field in midair. I chose the chaise, however, since I had fallen one too many times while lost in thought -- my field dissolving as my mind wandered too far.
So many memories . . . all racing back to mind in a flood. My life here had been wonderful. Even in the down times, my love for Peter, my love for everyone in our little family, had made things seem that much better. My leukemia, En’s deafness, Micky’s back problems, Peter’s cataracts, Mike’s diabetes, Danni’s adjustment to her gender change, Chris’ adjustment to his powers, Isa’s migraines -- all had seemed that much easier because of our love for each other.
Sometimes I wondered what life would have been like if I had gone back right away, back to Northeastern, my parents, my cyberfamily. If I had never been on that plane, never received my powers, never remained at the Pad for thirty years. What would life have been like?
I shook my head, dispelling the questions. I no longer wanted to know. Air rushed past me as someone sat on the wooden table beside the chaise. I looked up and saw my husband’s shining blue eyes.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
"More like a quarter . . . inflation you know," I said quietly.
"Lemme guess. You’re thinking about the past."
"Yup. I had the radio on while I was working at Ziggs . . . John Mellencamp’s new song ‘Your Life is Now’ came on and . . . well the lyrics started up a slew of memories."
"I see. It’s been an incredible ride these past . . . what is it now? Thirty years?" he said, laying down on his side, beside me on the chaise.
"Thirty-one."
"Would you give it up? Given the chance, have this never happen?" he asked, running a hand through my curls. I still had my hair in the same curly style . . . after a brief period in the eighties when I succumbed to peer pressure and grew it long into the long permed look.
"Nope. I mean . . . leave a husband I love dearly, family that means the world to me, doing what I love . . . no. I wouldn’t want to change that. Ever." I rolled over on my side and pulled my husband to me in a kiss.
"I’m glad. Because I don’t know what I would have done without you as my wife," he whispered in my ear after the kiss ended.
"Me neither." I sighed. "Want to take a walk with me? I need to clear my mind before I can get back to work."
"Certainly." He stood and held out a hand to me. I took it and we flew out the verandah doors on Peter’s telekinesis. Once out the doors I made us invisible and we flew across the beach, into town, through forest preserves, and back out over the beach just as the sun began to set. When we got back to the Pad, it was dinnertime. After Micky’s special recipe chili, Peter and I laid on the chaise together, falling asleep in each other’s arms instantly.
I awoke hours later. Peter was still beside me, fast asleep. I sighed. "Your Life is Now" was on the radio again. I laid back, listening, with my eyes closed.
"See the moon roll across the stars
See the seasons turn like a heart
Your father’s days are lost to you
This is your time here to do what you will do
Your life is now, your life is now, your life is now
In this undiscovered moment
Lift your head up above the crowd
We could shake this world
If you would only show us how
Your life is now
Would you teach your children to see the truth
Would you take the high road if you could choose
Do you believe you’re a victim of a great compromise
Cause I believe you could change your mind and change our lives
Your life is now, your life is now, your life is now
In this undiscovered moment
Lift your head up above the crowd
We could shake this world
If you would only show us how
Your life is now
Would you teach your children to tell the truth
This is your time here to do what you will do
Your life is now, your life is now, your life is now
In this undiscovered moment
Lift your head up above the crowd
We could shake this world
If you would only show us how
Your life is now
Your life is now, your life is now, your life is now
In this undiscovered moment
Lift your head up above the crowd
We could shake this world
If you would only show us how
Your life is now"
I slipped out of Peter’s arms and headed to Ziggy, our computer. Opening a new Works file, I started typing . . . and kept typing for a solid week, stopping only for meals, sleep, and gigs. At the end of the week I brought my new manuscript to the editor at my publishing company.
In May 1999, Your Life is Now was published. It held on the bestsellers list for ten straight weeks. The story of thirty years of the Monkees told in prose form appealed to America. And America wanted a tour . . . three years of touring, playing our best songs of the past thirty years. At the end of the tour, Peter asked me, "Are you happy, my wife?" I smiled. My answer didn’t need to be said. We all knew the answer.
Last updated 28 NOV 98
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