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The following program is a fictional story. While certain characters may bear a resemblance to or be based on actual people, this is a piece of art and does not claim to represent or impersonate any real-life person. While some of the events portrayed may be based on real-life events, they are not meant to be an accurate depiction of historical or current news events.
In part one of A Next Day, we find ourselves straddling two worlds; a dystopian future where the USA has been leveled by civil and world war, and a quietly desperate past where AJ, Karen and Sam meet in a bar on a random Thursday night and talk about their plans for surviving the end of a world. We learn about the origins of a matriarchal collective where whiteness is treated as a disease,
and the people who have come together to build anew have given up urgency, racism, and either/or thinking to live a slower, more intentional life in small community rooms of 12 people. We hear some of the gruesome details of the USA’s collapse, including the depravity of the ultra-rich, kidnapping, assault, enslavement, and the pollution of the world’s most vital resource–air.
Books are burned, histories are erased, and the women and non-binary people of Giovanni’s room are imagining a way forward that looks nothing like the violent and misogynistic past that they have managed to survive.
A Next Day, an Afrofuturist series by J.L. Roberts.
I want to welcome you to part two of A Next Day and sincerely apologize for the amount of time that has passed between the release of the first episode and this second part. It turns out that world building is very big and strenuous work, particularly as the USA slides further and further into fascism and companies like Spotify codify their theft of people’s intellectual property,
finding platforms for recording, editing, and hosting a podcast that are not complicit in genocide or just blatantly stealing the voices and ideas of the creatives who grace these companies with their presence has been difficult. It has taken me some time to make decisions about how to proceed and how to keep Giovanni’s Room funded. It is important to me that we are accountable in the ways that we can be to our audience and community.
Because I am currently carrying the majority of the load in the launch and maintenance of Giovanni’s Room, I cannot say for certain at what interval this podcast will be released. I can say that I aim to do better with scheduling and will release episodes as often as I am able. I hope you’ll stick with us. Building a world is messy and uncertain and wonderful. And I think it’s important that we witness the reality
of how what we imagine comes to fruition. Like every living thing on this earth, birth and growth are spasmodic and painful and gorgeous and awful and full of exciting twists and turns.
Yellow
“I’ve done the analysis, and, based on what I understand about human behavior, each room should have no more than fourteen people. Not one person more.”
“That’s oddly specific,” said Karen, “but go on…”
“It has to do with group think, mob mentality, splitting, et cetera, but we can go into that later. A room of fourteen people is how we’re going to make it out of this.”
“Fourteen is considered a Karmic number in numerology,” Sam said, placing my drink in front of me. “It might be a little heavy on the cinnamon this time.”
“As long as it’s not heavy on the star anise, this supertaster thanks you. Cheers!” I picked up my glass and brought it to Karen’s water glass.
“It’s bad luck to cheers alcohol with water!” said Karen, pulling her glass away.
“There’s no alcohol in my drink.”
“What? You and the bartender made up a non-alcoholic drink? You an addict or something?”
“No. I like bars. I don’t always like feeling drunk. It’s got some CBD and mushroom extracts in it. All the good feelings of alcohol; none of the negative effects. And it tastes AMAZING. Want to try it?”
“No thanks; I’m a tequila girl.”
“I love tequila. I’m making a batch right now.”
“You’re making your own tequila?! And drinking mushrooms and CBD at the bar?! Make it make sense!” She laughed again, rubbing her forehead and shaking her head.
“What doesn’t make sense? Why can’t both things be true?”
“Nevermind, nevermind. Let’s get back to the fourteen people.”
“Right, so a room has fourteen people. Two groups of seven, with a keeper in each group. So fourteen people, two groups, and then two keepers, who sometimes form their own group.”
“What’s a keeper?”
“We’ll get there.”
“You’re the biggest tease, I swear.”
“And you’re the most impatient. I can’t describe a whole world in a 2-minute bar spiel.”
“Well the bar’s closing, so just give me the reader’s digest version!”
“I got like thirty more minutes of clean-up to do; y’all are all right for a while,” Sam chimed in. “But I guess it took me like an hour to understand it, so—”
“—the bartender knows?! You told the bartender??!”
“Why do you say it like that??! Yes, I told Sam; I’ve been here for like three hours. I told you, we were chatting.”
“How exactly does the end of the world come up in casual conversation with a barte—“
“Sam! Say their name! They’re a human being; not a bartender. It’s so gross the way people—”
“It’s not because she’s a bar—”
“—they! Sam’s pronouns are they/them, and so are mine. Why are you so stuck on this? I think it’s time for me to go—”
“—it’s the fact that you just met them tonight at a bar and you’re having these deep conversations while they work. I don’t know, it’s just…what’s your name, anyway?”
“I just met you and we’re having the same conversation. Look around; the world’s going to shit. And some people, very few, but some, want to talk about it. Maybe even do something about it.”
“Yeah, but what can we do about it in a bar on a Thursday night?” She chuckled uncomfortably.
“This—all of this around us—was built just like this. In a bar, at a breakfast table; at the beach. Why does it matter where it happens? Should we rent an office? Would that feel more appropriate?”
“I’m Karen. And you’re…”
“This is why we’re in this position to begin with. The facade of officialism. People are obsessed with suits and paper and offices and labels and titles. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, it’s killing us; they’re killing us.”
“They killed my foster brother when I was twelve. He was nine. He was twirling a baton in the park. They said they thought it was a nightstick. He lost his grip, and they said he was throwing it at them.”
Sam had walked up to us slowly, scrubbing the bar, still looking down as they told the tale.
“Oh my god, Sam; that’s fucking awful. I’m sorry.” I reached out and put my hand on theirs. They were holding the bar rag, pretending to clean the same spot in front of me over and over. The touch of my skin on theirs stopped them. My gaze looked for theirs, looked to complete the connection.
They walked away again, wiping as they went.
“Yeah, that must have been hard; I’m sorry…” Karen’s cookie-cutter attempt at sympathy. “We’re just diving right into the deep end here…with thirty minutes to go…”
I sat very still, barely hearing Karen, looking at Sam, making my presence known as they re-cleaned the things that had already been gone over and left the still dirty spots alone.
“Jay.”
“What?”
“My name is Jay.”
“Jay?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s a keeper?”
“It’s kind of like a sponsor if you’re in AA.”
“So you have been to those meetings!”
“I’ve dated a couple of people in AA. I have a friend who’s an alcoholic. I went a few times with them, out of curiosity.”
“I’m not made for all that crap…”
“All what crap?”
“God grant me the strength…blah blah blah…it’s just…not my style.”
“Yeah…it wasn’t my style either. Mostly because I’m not an alcoholic. And I don’t subscribe to their model of curing substance abuse. The disease model is flawed.”
“Exactly! But wait–how are the keepers like sponsors then?”
“Well the thing that I did take away from the meetings I went to is that AA is a way for people to humanize one another around a problem that they share, and to create loving and supportive community. I was like, ‘everyone needs this, whether they’re an alcoholic or not!’”
“That’s a good point.”
“And not everyone has access to a good therapist or other mental health services. AA is a more community-based form of mental healthcare. It’s like what church and social clubs used to be, without all the racism, homophobia, and exclusion.”
“Third spaces.”
“Yup. I think the thing that’s broken is that we don’t know how to build third spaces.”
“Hell, we don’t know how to build FIRST spaces! My roommate gets on my fucking nerves!”
“I’m looking for a roommate right now and I’m dreading it.” Sam came back around. This time taking our cups and getting to the rest of the dirties in the sink.
“Is it a two-bedroom?” I engaged Sam in the roommate discussion to say, you are allowed to come and go in vulnerability with me as you please. The message was received.
“I live on Ocean. In a two-bedroom place. The second room is small, though. Used to be my studio. But I can’t afford to live alone anymore.”
“No one can. My sister just moved back in with my parents.”
“So Jay, how do you manage to get along with your roommate? You use all that AA stuff on them? Cumbayah?!”
“I don’t have a roommate. I find it very hard to share energetic space with other people for too long.”
“What do you pay in rent? You must have a good job!”
“I don’t pay rent. I live in a tiny house on the edge of my old neighbor’s property. She’s an older woman, and I exchange the plot of land I use for house and yardwork. I cook for her a few times a week, clean the things she cant, and I planted a garden on the back half of her lawn, put up fencing…I’m adding some invisible fencing and a self-contained solar system soon.”
“WHAAAAT?!”
“I’m gonna be done in about 15 minutes, just to give you two a heads up.”
Sam, chiming in to get us back on track. We still have this kind of shorthand. Only one other time in my life has my internal dictionary so completely overlapped with someone else’s.
“Ok–give me the rest. A keeper is an AA sponsor…”
“It’s really not. It is just the closest analogy I can find when I’m trying to explain something that has never existed to people who are used to seeing the world the way that it has been and is rather than the way it could be…”
“Ok, I get it, but we’re low on time, so tell me–“
“We’re not low on time; you’re low on patience.”
“She just said–I mean, they just said, they’re closing in 15 minutes!”
“Why does that mean that we have to rush our conversation?”
Red
“I have to go see Dani!” I pulled myself out of Karen’s grip.
“Alright, alright, love. Nobody is sayin’ you cant. Just let me have a look at ya first, eh?”
Sam always talked to me in a British accent when they wanted to calm me down, wanted me to remember who we are together, everything we’ve been through. They’re sparing with it, so it always works. I took a few steps backward and sat back on the cot.
“I have to tell her that I did what I could, that Cara, she just…” I trailed off as the blast replayed in real time in my mind.
“She knows. We all know. Don’t worry, you’ll tell her. You will. But this isn’t a time important moment for that. It’s an important moment for you to get checked over.”
“It’s all Cara’s, the blood…”
“Budge up and let me help you with that jacket and mask; then we’ll see what’s what.”
Sam sat down on the cot next to me, fully masked and suited in decontamination gear. They took my coat by the collar, and wiping away some of the debris and powder, began to undress me.
“How does your neck feel, love? No, don’t–“
I had started turning my head from my left shoulder to my right–
“–it’s fine, see? I’m completely fine, I promise. I don’t feel anything. Not even a scratch,” I said, examining my hands. “Well, a few scratches, but they’ll heal.”
I remembered crawling out of the rubble, grabbing onto the mountain of collapsed building pieces toward a patch of light I saw ahead. A mailbox had taken the brunt of that part of the blast and left a small space where I could just make it out.
Karen used the claw arm we had built for these scenarios to hand Sam some disinfectant and bandages for my hands. Out of instinct I went to grab them when Sam reminded me “don’t contaminate the bandages; here, let me.”
Once I was undressed and looked over, I decontaminated in the shower, put on a quarantine jumpsuit, and Sam cleaned and dressed my wounds. There was a small cut near the crown of my head where some rubble had fallen onto me as I squeezed out of the aftermath of the building collapse. But otherwise, the rest of me was okay.
Sam began humming to me as they felt my anxiety building. It was an old Irish lullaby that they remember from their mom.
I don’t like it when people know me this well. Very few do. Maybe only Sam and Karen.
I was busy feeling like I needed to do something, like I wanted to do anything but sit there with the reality that Cara was gone. That the children might be lost to us forever. That the explosion was targeted and purposeful. But I knew that it was. Julia too; gone. Gone.
“Julia…has a tree already…” I wasn’t disoriented. But I had to reach for my own memories.
“Yes, an oak…you know this already…let me have a look at your eyes…” Sam stopped cleaning my head wound and took a mini flashlight from the claw arm.
“No, I know. I know Julia’s gone, I just…”
“Hold still.” Sam passed the light over my pupils. “Can you tell me what day it is?”
“No, but we both know I hardly ever know that.”
“Time is not real,” we said in unison.
“I’m okay, really. You know this just happens sometimes.” I hadn’t told them about the dying yet. I was still trying to understand it myself. But I think Sam was starting to become suspicious at the number of explosions and attacks I had survived.
“How does your head feel? Any headache or dizziness? Stand up and let me check your balance.”
“No headache–“
“–but you could still be in shock,” they said, staring into my eyes with the usual confusion, this time laced with that much more fear. It was the fear that had kept me from saying it out loud.
“My heart rate is normal. No shock.” I stood up and performed all of the balance test maneuvers. “No concussion, I swear. And no, I’m not trying to rush you. I’m just saying…” I wanted to say it. I wanted to be able to get the words out. But I don’t think I was ready to hear it in my own ears. In my own voice.
I sat back down again, and Sam checked my reflexes, and then brought the flashlight back to my eyes.
“You’re just looking for an excuse to stare deep into my soul,” I joked. I didn’t like them looking afraid that way. I wasn’t sure that they were afraid of me exactly. But they looked kind of like they used to before we really knew each other, like the morning after we kissed for the first time. They admitted to me months later that they’d lost everyone they had ever kissed before me. That for them, kissing was this point of no return, and none of their friendships had ever survived it. “Kissing is a portal to everyone’s deepest wounds,” is what they had said. But that look meant something else now. And neither of us had the words to bring it out into the open.
“Ok, I’m all good. Just give me some gloves, and I’ll go to Dani.”
“I think you should wait a while, until your memories come all the way back.” They know. That’s exactly how it always feels–like my memories have floated out of reach and I’m waiting for them to come back in, like a tide.
“Maybe you’re right; I don’t want to say anything weird to Dani. What am I even going to say?”
“You did everything you could,” Karen chimed in, cleaning up Sam’s tools and taking them to the decontaminator. “I don’t know how you even made it out of there. The way Cara looked, you both must have caught a lot of the blast.”
“I don’t even know where it came from. I think she got knocked into me. And then I just held on, trying to…”
“You did everything you could,” Karen repeated, squeezing my shoulder and handing me a pair of gloves.
Sam was still sitting on the cot. They were stiller than normal, and flinched when I put my gloved hand on theirs.
“Are you okay?” I said, hoping that we were still being quiet about…the dying. I looked into their eyes, trying to muster up some reassurance, but not sure I pulled it off. Whatever was happening to me, I was okay. I had been able to save a few people because of it. I had tried with Cara…but she was already hit by the blast. If anything, her body had shielded me. Sam looked away for a moment, then back at me.
“Julia, what do you remember?”
“I remember it all now. It’s back. Promise.” It was faster each time, but that didn’t make it any less unsettling. Sam didn’t seem sure, so I started to recount it.
“They were looking for the children–Julia and Roman, Javon and Toni. Julia’s an oak now. I picked it myself.”
“Okay,” Sam said, satisfied.
“My heart is aching. Dani and I need to talk.”
“Okay, go ahead. But come back right after and lie down for a while.”
“I will,” I said, walking to the door.
Dani hadn’t cried until she saw me. Her legs started to give out as soon as we made eye contact, and I sped toward her to catch her. No one had ever seen her like that. She was so stoic about Cara most of the time. She had never dated a woman before, and they made sure to be discreet. Even though there was no church, no court of public opinion looming over her, she was still fighting a lot of the same internal battles that we all were. Whiteness is an intricate and complicated disease.
“I should have told her more…how I felt.” Her voice was hoarse, and it cracked as she strained to get the words out without devolving back into her cries.
“She knew. I know she did. When I was holding her…” I stopped myself, not sure that she’d want all the details. Few people do.
“Karen said she was in your arms…I should have been there…”
“She loves you like the wind.”
“What? What did you–“
“–That’s what she said. In my ear.”
She collapsed in my lap then and bawled. And I did to. We were there that way until after dinner, Dani wishing she had died with Cara. I wishing I had died instead so that we all could have come back alive.
Sam came out to get me, insisting that I rest and that Dani eat.
“Essence is asking for you, Dani. She wouldn’t eat without you. Jacari tried, but she’s crying and asking for you. You tell me what you need, and we’ll–“
“–I need a reason to stop crying. And little Essie is a good one.”
We rose together, and I kept my arms under her armpits to make sure that she had her legs before I let go. Jacari came out to meet Dani and told on Essie again, as the two of them walked together toward the dining hall.
“Dani, my heart is aching in my chest too,” said Jacari, taking her hand.
“Did you find the door?” Dani turned and shouted at our backs as Sam and I walked back to quarantine.
I had forgotten all about the door. The whole reason we had gone out.
“We did,” I said, though I’m not sure it mattered now anyway.
Dani nodded, and Jacari tugged her away.
“I was going to ask…about the mission, once you’d gotten some rest.”
“I really am okay. I’m not even that tired,” I said, wishing I hadn’t. Every word felt like a confession. Who gets blown up and isn’t tired after? “We didn’t even find one vial. The bottles had been smashed, like with a hammer. It was definitely on purpose.”
“Fucking Twat Wanker Arseholes!” Sam always knew where to place a string of British curse words.
“How’s Jacari doing?”
“The same. We’re using the fruit juice as sparingly as we can. Rose almost slipped and told him, but Rae stopped her.”
“Of course she did. Sometimes the former before the white is real difficult to see where Rose is concerned…”
Sam chuckled.
“I’ll introspect. Moment of weakness. I apologize and I am accountable to myself and my community.”
“It’s just us,” said Sam, “Sounds to me like you are tired. Let’s change your bandaids before you go to sleep, though. I see Blood inside your suit.”
Just then, I remembered the bandaid.
“Shit–has Karen burned the clothes I was wearing?”
“No, not yet. She was getting to it when I came to get you.”
“We need to hurry back–we found a few seeds! I had to wrap them in a Bandaid. They’re in the little pocket of my pants.”
“I’m sure she–“
I took off running. Sam didn’t bother yelling ahead, and caught up just as I reached Karen at the decontamination pit. The fire was already going.
“Did you–“
“Hey, how’s Dani?”
“Did you burn the pants already?”
“Yeah, they went in, why?”
I sunk to the ground in disbelief.
“She died for fucking nothing!” I screamed.
“AJ, I have the seeds. I checked all the pockets before–“
I tackled Karen with a hug. For all her faults, her snooping was a positive more often than not. She held me in her arms then, and, for the first time since Cara had died, my body fully relaxed.
Sam stood back and let us have a moment. I needed the hug more than I realized.
“Get in here,” I untucked my masked face from the neck of Karen’s suit, and let go of Karen with one hand, gesturing to Sam. We stood together in a three-way embrace, holding each other for so long that we started sweating in our suits as the fire rose up out of the hole in the ground behind us.
What happens after the fall of the US empire? When the United States loses its stronghold in the global economic market and the American people are forced to reckon with who they want to be and how they want to live. A Next Day is an interactive Afrofuturist science fiction series about the origins of Giovanni’s Room, a matriarchal collective that forms in the wake of the collapse of one of history’s most powerful regimes. Listeners are encouraged to follow along and send in their story ideas to giovannisroomgcc@gmail.com. Help us tell the tale. Help us write the future into existence.