The Day the World Got Woke

Fiction that will terrify those who are promote the great replacement theory

Photo by Pam Sharpe on Unsplash

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When I went to sleep last night, everything was normal.

When I woke up, everything was different. Everything was Black. But not like, hip-hop Black, really.

Just, well, Black. Black culture, everywhere. With lots of Native American culture mixed in. And people referred to Native Americans as First Settlers.

Maybe I should backtrack a little here. Because none of that was apparent to me until I had been awake for several hours.

When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. A nice little house but it wasn’t really mine. And yet, I had a sense that it was mine. You know, like a dream? Where you just know things, but things are completely different than reality?

The kitchen was spartan but for a red mat adhering to a table. When I approached it, the mat morphed into a blue screen with a series of icons at the top. I thought it was cool, so I investigated further.

As I lifted the corner of the device, it bent easily. I unpeeled it from the table, unable to determine how it was fastened so well to the table’s surface yet so easily removed. It became obvious that I could roll it up and carry it around. I smoothed it over the table and tried to figure the thing out.

When I touched an icon, software I didn’t recognize or know how to use fired up. I tried to Google but there was no Google. There was no browser that I could see. Just a bunch of icons that made no sense to me.

I’ve woken from enough dreams in my life to recognize that this wasn’t a dream. Something weird was happening.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when something on my wrist vibrated with a humming noise. I looked at it, recognizing it as a wearable of some sort. A thin light band of light was moving horizontally across a flexible display that covered the top of a larger strap wrapped around my wrist.

It wasn’t like a smartwatch. The screen was the size of a baseball card, the wristband wide enough to accommodate it.

I didn’t know what to do so I touched the screen hoping the device would stop vibrating and the light would do something else. When I did, a pretty young lady with brown skin and a wide bright smile appeared saying, “Hi, Terry what’s offing?” She had a weird accent.

“Offing?” I shook my head. “Who are you?”

She laughed. “You will be by tonight, right? I’m making your favorite.” I gulped. I knew her. But I didn’t. “My favorite?” I ventured, wondering what that might be in my sudden Twilight Zone.

“Yeah yeah, that Doro Wat with braised Elk you loved so much last time you were here. You begged me to make it again. Immediately you said. What’s with the weird accent? You sound like a Psycho. Not that I’ve ever heard a Psycho in person.” She laughed at that.

“A psycho?”

“Yeah, you know, a gold miner. Off Psyche 16.” She giggled. “I barely know what they sound like and I’m saying that. Have you ever seen one interviewed? They’re so skinny!”

Artist’s concept of the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is said by some to have substantial gold deposits. Image credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech

I was trying to understand all of that at once and was understanding none of it. And what did the sound made by whoever or whatever she was talking about have to do with being skinny?

“I’m sorry, I’m a little out of sorts,” I stammered.

“Out of sorts. What is that? What is wrong with you? Now you really do sound like you’re from another planet. And you need to fix your device. You look ghastly on cam right now.”

“Hold on I think I have a call on my landline,” I tried. But when I looked at the device on my wrist, I realized I had no idea how to end the conversation. There were no icons on the screen. There was nothing on the wristband.

“Landline? You’re using strange words, Terry. Where’s my Terry? Who are you?” she laughed. “Ok gotta go. Bye! End call!” And she fizzled out.

I realized I was sweating. Not like in a dream. This was for real. It was stressful, too, like I was really in a relationship with this woman but with no way to talk to her because, well, she was foreign. From another country or something. I couldn’t tell which one.

No. It was more like I was the one who was the foreigner, but she didn’t know that I was a foreigner.

Maybe she was from Africa somewhere? She was beautiful, that was for sure. But who was she? I had never dated a Black girl. This was a weird way to start.

And that’s how it all began. It got weirder after that.

I decided I should take a walk. Try and sort through this, see where I was. When I got to the door, I couldn’t figure out how to open it. It had no doorknob. Just a thin little metallic plate where a doorknob should have been. I pushed the door knowing perfectly well nothing would happen. I was right.

I walked to the window to look at the neighborhood. As I watched the people walking around or tending to their outdoor areas, a ripple of fear struck me as I realized all my neighbors were Black.

I examined the front window to evaluate its security. It didn’t seem all that secure, which sent another shudder through me. It seemed to me that such a big window should have iron bars over it in a neighborhood like this. The front door of the house provided a sense of fortification since I couldn’t leave my own house. But the front window could be a problem if I had to stay here overnight.

Photo by Chris Nguyen on Unsplash

I tapped my wrist wearable hoping to randomly find an answer, but the thing stayed silent. I continued to peer outside, studying the nearby residents.

One guy with ebony skin was tending a wildly lush garden full of a variety of fruits and vegetables. Judging from the way the house behind the garden was situated, it seemed to be his house, belonging to the same property.

He was wearing a long colorful shirt over what looked like black canvas shorts that were cut at the knee.

He was loading something that resembled a small shopping cart without handles. It had legs, like one of those dog robots you see on YouTube.

The man went inside his house for several minutes. If this was a high-crime neighborhood, clearly the bad guys weren’t targeting squash and tomatoes or robot doggy shopping carts.

I saw a woman talking on her wearable as an automated stroller carrying what I assumed to be a child rolled in front of her without her assistance. A bot stroller, I guessed.

She was wearing an abundance of accessories, like bracelets and a tall headdress. She looked very regal, like an African queen, in a long flowing purple gown with gilded sleeves swaying with her walk.

It also seemed like there was a canopy of feathers at the top of the headdress.

I shuffled nervously to the door again, looking it up and down. I started pounding on it. “Let me out!” I kept pounding.

I didn’t know what else to do, but I knew this was the kind of thing the victim in a Twilight Zone episode would do. I waited, then pounded again.

Not long after, I heard a male voice on the other side of the door say, “You okay in there?” in the same accent the beautiful woman on my wearable used.

“No, I can’t open my door!” I yelled through.

“Your code doesn’t work?”

“Code?” I bellowed.

“Yeah, man, you know. Code. It doesn’t work?”

I was silent for a moment, trying to figure out what he was trying to tell me. The door must have had some voice activation system. That seemed to be how the beautiful woman ended our call, too. “End call,” she had said before disappearing.

“Ummm, yeah yeah of course but it isn’t working.”

I could hear the man chuckle. “You know, maybe try your sentry service? Just a thought!” Another chuckle.

“I don’t know who they are.” I was proud of myself. I was catching on. “I’m just staying here for a few days with my brother.”

“Okay, I’ll call congregational services for you. Do you know your brother’s congregation?”

Oh dear God, I thought, that was going to stump me completely. “No,” was all I could come up with.

“Not a problem I’ll call the regionals. They’ll be here soon. Good luck to you.”

When I looked out the front window, I could see him wander off.

When the “regional services” arrived just a few minutes later my door opened. I figured there’d be several police types in uniform but instead, it was a middle-aged lady with beautiful reddish-brown skin and a gleaming smile. She wore a big blue floppy hat that said, “Congregational Services.”

“Apologies, Mr. Barnes,” she said, referring to my last name. “I didn’t mean to open the door. Pressed the wrong button.” She backed away respectfully from the door.

“No no it’s fine. Listen can I confide something in you?”

“If you care to, but I’m afraid my expertise favors the technical aspects of life, not psychological. If that matters.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it matters.”

“Very well, how can I help?”

I motioned for her to step inside. “I’d offer you some tea or coffee but that goes to the situation I need to confide in you about.”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

She was a short, thin lady, but looked to be in good shape. Curiously, I wondered about her exercise routine. “How to say this. I think I have a touch of amnesia. I don’t know where I am, or how to use anything here. Like this.” I pointed to my wrist wearable.

She seemed unaffected. “Do you know your name?”

“Yes. Terry Barnes.”

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She nodded. “Let’s do a quick eye scan.” She held her wearable up to my eye. “Very good. That’s a start, then, isn’t it?” She peered at her wearable. “That seems to be you, but you look a tad different here. Are you not feeling well? You have quite the pallor about you.”

I didn’t say anything. “Well, anyway, yours looks to be a basic communications device from one of the West Coast congregations. Did you use your roll-up to discover how to use it?”

I shook my head since I didn’t know what a roll-up was.

“Well let’s do that now, shall we?” she smiled gently.

She walked inside and closed the door by speaking softly into her wearable. She stood there for a few long moments before saying, “Waiting.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what a roll-up is.”

“Oh my, you do have a problem. Are you experiencing any headaches, anything of that nature? I should certainly call a doctor for you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know what kind of health insurance I have,” I objected.

“Insurance? Hmmm. Interesting word choice. I’ve never heard health services described in such a way. Well, since you’re cogent, aside from your memory issue, let’s focus on finding your roll-up.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Have you seen a device that lights up in any way, flexible, about this big?” She spread out her hands.

“Yes, yes in the kitchen,” I replied excitedly.

“Excellent. Lead the way.”

I showed her to the kitchen table where the red mat was. “Ah, good,” she said. “Did you try it?”

I nodded and walked her through exactly what I did.

“I would suggest that you weren’t looking for anything specific, so perhaps the roll-up didn’t know what to do,” she said. She instructed me to sit at the table and rest my finger on one of the icons at the top of the mat. “Now, think of a question. I can help with that since you have no context. Let’s see. How about you ask for news headlines?”

“Give me news headlines,” I said.

She laughed. “You don’t need to speak it, Mr. Barnes. The device reacts to touch and thought.”

I thought that sounded amazing, but it immediately prompted a question. “But then why didn’t it tell me what was going on when I was checking it out?”

“I can’t say. Perhaps because it doesn’t know you yet. If your question wasn’t specific, then it may have had a difficult time interpreting your more random thoughts in order to provide assistance. That will change as it comes to know you again. It’s possible your amnesia has affected its interpretive algorithms.”

“Oh.”

Meanwhile, a long list of headlines displayed. I tapped the first one with my finger, and the woman nodded. “My name is Easter Brooks,” she said, extending her hand.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” I said. “I’d be lost without you.”

“Just doing my congregational duty, but you are very welcome.” She glanced at the display. “It certainly recognizes your fingerprint. We are off to a good start.”

I looked at the news story.

Prophetess Mayfair Publicly Denounces Ecclesiastical Tribune Joshua Brand, Warns of “Disastrous Times of Fear”.

Prophetess Mayfair today released a strongly worded Ecclesiastical Note warning that the selection of Joshua Brand as Ecclesiastical Tribune “subverts the authority of God and replaces it with an autocrat who germinates the Synod and our churches with fear.” The strongly worded note was unprecedented in tone from a high-ranking priestess within one of the nation’s most revered religious orders and congregations, the First Baptist Congregation of Savannah.

Mr. Brand responded by issuing a formal response via a Synod newsfeed stating, “No action I take, no participation in Synod affairs, shall occur without taking into deep account the reverence I have for Prophetess Mayfair and other congregational High Priests and Priestesses. This has been my policy since I first stepped into congregational affairs, and shall remain so.”

I had a lot of questions as my index finger rested at the top of the headline. A group of small rounded icons seemed to queue up, then collapse into a series of lines under the news story.

One of the things I thought was how strikingly handsome this Joshua Brand fellow was, even to a hetero like myself. Another thing I noticed was how old Prophetess Mayfair looked. When I tapped the first line item another story appeared:

Is Joshua Brand the hottest Tribune in Carolina Union history?

I skipped that one to read the next. It wasn’t a story, just a small factoid:

Prophetess Mayfair is 101 years old.

I wondered what the Carolina Union was.

Sure enough, another factoid appeared, this one in the form of what in my world would have looked like a Wikipedia entry:

The Carolina Union is the largest provincial region in the United States. It was formed in 1801 as the Carolina Union of the Queen after achieving hegemony over The North American Union, which had been created by Earl Charles Cornwallis after the British victory in the Colonial Rebellion of 1775–1777.

The North American Union of 1778–1801 consisted of The Carolinas, formally called The Carolina Union, consisting of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, along with territorial rights to Florida; the New England Federation, consisting of the New England provinces north of the Carolinas, and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, consisting of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario (with the Ohio River as a southern boundary), and parts of New York.

I looked at the woman. “Okay, well you have been very helpful. I’m in a dream. I’m dreaming this. A very realistic dream.”

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

She smiled warmly. “If you are in a dream, then I must be, as well. I most certainly am not.”

“I hate to be rude or politically incorrect, but why is everyone Black?” Joshua Brand was Black, Prophetess Mayfair was Black. My neighbors were all Black, or, perhaps more accurately in my other world, people of color.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Black? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Nor do I understand the term politically incorrect.”

“I mean, where I come from, people are, well there’s Black, white, mixed race, Asian. Etcetera. And Carolina Union? What is that?”

“Well, I must say you do look quite pale. Have you been ill?”

“I… what?”

“Jaundice perhaps? We really should call a doctor for you. You also sound a little, how to put this delicately — befuddled?”

“That I am.”

“Most of your questions can be answered by putting your finger on the roll-up and thinking about them. Well, if you do not wish for a doctor, I won’t force the issue.”

I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered why we were here, and the roll-up told me how to work with my wearable.

When I was finished, Easter stood up. “Best of luck to you, Mr. Barnes.” She seemed to be fighting back a chuckle when she said this. She wheeled around and headed for the door.

“Ah, one thing,” she added. “We should reprogram your door so that you have right of entry to your home. What command would you like to use for opening and closing your door?”

“Open sesame?”

“Fine. And for closing?”

“Close sesame?”

She nodded and spoke something into her wearable. Then tapped a few things into it. “Consult your roll-up on how to make these changes yourself. Try to open it.”

I said, “Open sesame.” The door opened.

She bowed and left. The door remained open. “Close sesame,” I said, and the door silently moved towards the closed position before slamming shut.

I decided to check out the roll-up again before venturing outside. I walked to the kitchen table, sat down, and put my finger on the device. I instinctively said, “Where the hell am I?”

Because I obviously thought it, as well, the device popped up a map with a little circle around where I guessed I was according to the roll-up. The streets were unfamiliar.

“Zoom out,” I said, realizing that it may not know those words.

Nothing happened but as I thought about it more the map panned out into a larger context. That was better. The Bay Area. But the city I was in wasn’t called Oakland.

And where was the Trader Joe’s? Where was College Avenue? The map zoomed back in. It appeared I was in a neighborhood called Kinlaza Heights. On a street with a name I’d never heard. Anywhere.

I couldn’t take any more of this. I needed to step outside, breathe some air, and mingle with my new neighbors.

I opened the door as instructed by Easter Brooks. I felt a little liberal guilt as I wondered if I needed a gun.

It was almost chaotically busy outside. Nothing like my real neighborhood. Many people were walking about. Many had one, two, or three people on their property talking.

When I reached the street, I could see that it stretched down to a plaza of some sort. It looked a little like a cul-de-sac, but it wasn’t ringed by homes. Instead, it was crowded with people. I decided to check it out.

A man interrupted me as I began to walk.

“Excuse me, hey,” he said.

I looked at the man. He was a short, somewhat round man with a bald head and long looping earrings. He wore a dress — that is the only way to describe it; a long, black dress that stretched to his ankles, decorated with thousands of different colorful patterns.

His wrists were adorned with several bracelets each.

“Are you staying with Barnes, man?”

“Umm…”

He was nearly a foot shorter than me, so as he approached me, he seemed to be standing up on his toes to take a closer look at me. “You look a lot like him but… different.”

“My name is Terry Barnes if that helps.”

He stood down, then stood back.

“Huh-uh, no way.”

As I looked around, what should have been my Rockridge neighborhood was something else. A Black something else. Which was fine, I thought. I’m not a prejudiced dude, right? But everyone, every single person, was a least a shade darker than me.

Photo by Slim Emcee on Unsplash

I didn’t know how to respond to the man, who continued to study me carefully.

“You look just like Terry. Mostly. But… uhh, no, I guess.” He shook his head.

“I know, I look paler than Terry, right?”

Eventually, the man, whose name turned out to be Maldonado Akimba, “My friends call me Molly,” invited me into his home, which was full of tapestries, candles, and electronics.

There was music playing that sounded like a combination of hip hop, jazz, and something else I couldn’t really identify, something with woodwinds. It was strikingly cool.

I realized at that moment that my home in this dream world had been devoid of any decoration.

Molly offered me something to drink, and as I sat and drank a cup of rich-tasting green tea, I tried to fish information out of him. It was clear after talking to him for just a few moments that he had been close to someone named Terry Barnes who lived next door to him.

Here’s the weird part. As we talked, my skin became darker. Not a lot darker, just a shade, I thought, as I watched. Like a deep tan, but richer, better, natural.

“It is you! What happened to you? Well, you’re getting your color back at least. Thank God. You were white as a sheet. I don’t want to alarm you but I thought you were about to pass out and die on me right there on the street.”

I needed to talk to somebody. If I was in a dream, I knew it didn’t really matter what I said. There would be no real consequences. If I was somehow in an alternative world, that was a bigger problem, but one I needed to understand.

So I told Molly about the world I came from.

He looked stunned for the entire two or so hours.

“So you’re saying that in your world, and listen, I’m just, how should I say it? Accommodating you as a friend. Going as if, you know? You’re saying in your world, the rebels won and created a slave culture that lasted through modern times?”

“Well, I didn’t really say that.”

“And that you have militia patrolling the streets of neighborhoods, even white ones?”

I nodded. “I guess that’s about right.”

He smiled. “A police state.”

“You don’t have police here?”

“Police? Well, not in the sense you are describing. It’s easy enough to call up a security detail if you really need one but, dear God, not… no. No, we don’t live in a police state. Sounds like Argentina. Militia vehicles patrolling neighborhoods. What are they looking for?”

“There’s no crime here?” I asked.

“Well, yes, there’s crime. An occasional murder, some drunks fighting at a bar, that kind of thing. Domestic violence. But the militia doesn’t patrol the streets like you are describing.

“The United States of America. That was the name the rebels tried to give their country, right?” he asked. “When they declared independence? I remember that from the history books. It took awhile to adopt that name because of that association, but everyone decided it fit the circumstances of the federation.”

I nodded. I asked him how this Carolina Union came about. I had seen an initial blurb on it on my roll-up, where I could have found more information, but I wanted to hear it from a real person.

I looked at my arm, wondering why it had turned a shade darker. I had to admit, it looked better. Various artifacts and splotches that had been a part of my white skin forever were gone.

As Molly explained it, the Carolina Union became the dominant confederation of three separate groups of provinces shortly after the Revolutionary War (he called it The Colonial Rebellion) and is still considered the heart and soul of what became the United States a hundred years after its birth in my timeline.

The Union, as he called it, remained part of the British Crown for a hundred years, but independent, sort of like our Canada.

The Carolina Union got its initial power from a massive migration of Blacks from various parts of the world. Freed slaves from the northeast, Blacks from Africa excited about educational opportunities, and Caribbeans.

He said there were something like 400,000 Black migrants in the Carolinas by the early 19th century. They quickly overran plantations and seaports.

Essentially, a powerful African nation rose on the East Coast that stretched from Virginia to Florida, west to the Mississippi.

He intimated that the result was a color-blind society. My heart actually pounded with excitement at the thought of such a thing.

“Not really color-blind,” Molly corrected. “Literature frequently mentions the tint of a person’s skin, but it’s celebratory, not derogatory. Make sense? I commented on your paler tones because you looked so different than you did only yesterday. Not out of disrespect.”

And Africa never got colonized, Molly said, after some initial skirmishes pushed Europeans out of Africa, partly because of a strong alliance between the Carolina Union and some African countries that eventually became global powers.

“Wow, it’s Black Panther on steroids,” I said.

“Sorry?” Molly said. I guessed Stan Lee wasn’t part of this world. Or if he was, Black Panther had never become a necessary storyline.

I looked at my wearable and thought about the asteroid gold mine the beautiful woman on my wearable was talking about.

“Your culture seems more technologically advanced than ours,” I said.

“Well,” he laughed. “I’m sorry. This is a strange game you are playing with me, Terry. But okay. You described a long civil war, one that seemed to still be taking place even today in your world, as you describe it. That’ll knock advances in science about a bit, no? When a huge group of gifted people cannot participate?”

“Well, it’s not still going on. The civil war ended in 1865.”

“Based on your description, it appears to be ongoing.” He poured more tea into my cup and sat down.

“Simply based on what you tell me, the militia groups that rounded up slaves in both our timelines never went away in yours, and now, patrol the streets openly in, what did you call them?”

“Police cars.”

“And they’re everywhere? Big cities? Small towns?”

I nodded.

“That’s a creepy world you got there.”

I tried to tell him how the country was changing in my world, how even mid-size cities were becoming human rainbows of diversity, but when pressed, I had to admit to the stark demarcations that kept us all separate.

And when he told me about his world, I thought about opportunity. And what a simple concept it was. One word that could have changed our world had allowed his to be awake with glory and a deep, vibrant soul that made my world seem primitive and small.

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If you like the concepts in this short story, get the teaser for my upcoming novel Restive Souls.

It’s a crime story without the cops and it’s only 99 cents! That’s about 1/100th of a cup of Starbucks coffee! Okay, I’m prone to exaggeration. But I bet it’s more than three times cheaper than a Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte. Click or tap the button below:

The Trial of Summary James is a novella set within an alternative history involving a North America where the colonists lost the Revolutionary War, the British freed the slaves, and a massive migration from Africa and the Caribbean empowered Black and Native Americans to help build a nation called the Carolina Union in their image.

None of the characters in this short story appear in either Restive Souls or The Trial of Summary James. It’s written under my real name, instead of my pen name.

And if you’ve read this far, thank you. Stay at peace with your fellow humans, and pray for justice, love, and grace.