Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The Empty Future by Bobby Lynch

The Empty Future

After traveling to the future, I was surprised by what I saw. Expecting to see many ornate and elaborate structures, the vast nothingness shocked me. Off in the distance, across a large empty field, I saw a small building. As I began to walk across the field towards the building, a small aircraft soared above my head without making a sound. Within an instant it arrived at the building and, seemingly without stopping, stopped in front of the building, dropped a group of people off, and raced off into the empty backdrop behind the building. Now, even more curious as to what this building was, I quickened my pace and headed towards the structure.

As I drew closer to the building and began to examine it I felt as if it were missing something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, until suddenly it hit me: the building did not have any windows. It was just a bare, gray, rectangular building, which seemed to be made out of a concrete-like material. I noticed how bare and boring it looked. The only part of the building contrasting with the lifeless body was the small glass door in the front. Looking through the glass, I could see a counter, behind which a woman wearing a white jacket was standing. A long line of people streched in front of the counter, and some others were sitting in white leather couches on the sides of the room. I was puzzled as to what this could be.

Upon opening the door and entering the room, I immediately noticed a feeling of dullness, almost as though the room lacked life. By the time I entered the room, there were only about three people left waiting on line, and the rest had joined the people on the side couches. I, to be inconspicuous, stood on the side near the couches and watched the people on line. Without the woman behind the desk saying a word the person on line would say some kind of odd name, and the woman would hit a few buttons on a computer. Then, within a few seconds, a bottle would come down a tube behind her. She would hand the bottle to the person in line, still without saying a word. The person would then go sit on a couch and wait. After a while, I inferred that this was some kind of pharmacy, and that the names the people were saying were the names of their medications. However, I could not be sure, and was too scared to ask, as I had yet to hear another person speak.

The entire process moved remarkably fast. Within a minute of me being in the room, everyone had been given their bottle. Almost immediately after the last person had been served, I heard horn from outside, almost like a car horn. Everyone stood up and walked out the door. Not knowing what was going on, I followed suit. Outside a large aircraft was on the ground in front of the building, with a door open on its side. Everyone piled into the aircraft, in which the driver pointed to a seat, signaling a person to sit there. Again, not a word was spoken by anybody. After every person had been seated, the aircraft rose high into the sky, and rocketed away.

Sitting in the aircraft, I realized what was going on. The future had become such a systemic and efficient society that there was little need for communication. Everything had been done so fast and easily that people felt no inclination to speak to one another. The only words that were at all were between mothers and their children, or people who were clearly together. Even these conversations were quick and unanimated. I thought to myself that what these people considered convenient, to me actually seemed like a society that had sucked the joy and spontaneity out of life. I awaited the end of the trip in the aircraft, hoping that at our destination, whatever that may have been, I would find that my theory was wrong.

1 comment:

James Horner said...

dangling modifier who expected?

a to be continued ending...