Mundanely Luxurious

The highway dipped and curved under a wide overpass, plunging them into darkness. Several lanes of traffic joined the main flow all at once, sneaking rapidly up from the tree-lined interstate or snaking down from roads above. The new arrivals joined their momentum, and they became a singular entity, coursing over the artery of transit.

The curve straightened and a wide vista appeared before them. The highway stretched far out in front of him, the tops of buildings and long strings of trees vaulted over the wide expanse, and beyond them rose dark green hills, eventual obstacles for the highway to wind around. The tall hills swarmed with trees and shrubbery, though at times the light brown rock of cliffs would peek through in sharp relief.

Above them all hung an unbroken expanse of billowing clouds, tinted a deep dark blue by the daylight, and heavy with the promise of rain. Their surroundings were bright and luminous in dramatic contrast to the dark sky. It was as if the ground and the sky were both adamantly refusing to play along with the other in a fit of stubbornness. Thus the rare skyline before them, thus the feeling that one was driving into a painting.

Heavy gusts and slicing wind energized their surroundings, waving the trees back and forth, dislodging the few leaves that had already browned in anticipation of the coming autumn. The car cleaved a path through them, tossing them aside, spinning them wildly in every direction, as it continued on its course.

They drove through the protesting storm, daring it to break open as they curved around thick industrial section of the city, vaulted over sprawling commercial centers, passed countless billboards. They left the city behind and the forest and hills crowded around them in commiseration, hiding their passage from those who resided beyond the vast stretches of green.

The surroundings became a tranquil monotony of natural beauty and one would eventually find themselves silently pleading for the journey to end, for their destination to break the hold of the rolling scenery. There must be a thousand snippets of highway all around the country, one would think in exasperation, that look exactly like this. And wouldn't it be wonderful if they were all connected? If one could fold the land over itself, drive into the scenery in this state, and instantly emerge from the almost-exact-same scenery in another? Must we always travel in such straight lines? Can we not include angles into the construction of our world?

But then you would not learn what you must from the journey. That in the uncountable movings and dealings of humanity, there is still so much left unspoiled. There is still so much beauty stretching over the land that the very concept of it has become mundanely luxurious.

You live in a beautiful world, still.

Driver's Ed's Ed

The children always drove too slowly when he took them out for road training. Within moments of leaving the high school parking lot, a line of cars would inevitably be stacked behind them, though never once would you hear any of them honking in frustration. The enormous signs plastered onto every surface of the vehicle spoke of the patient schooling in progress, the triangular cap atop of the car revealed the dunce behind the wheel. (Still, even after all of our compassionate societal advances.) And the motorists understood, although Ed was not eager to test their patience, and always ordered the student to take the first turn available.

They always signaled, well in advance of any turn. The posted speed limit was obeyed down to nearly microscopic levels. The students tried so hard not to point out their excellent driving behavior to him, their faces were equal part overabundant confidence and meek confusion, and he picked up on it almost before they even thought to broadcast the feeling. They ached for his approval, for any sign that they were not only passing completely, they were the best novice driver he had ever seen. Because of this, most lessons swayed along with an infuriating grace.

The course he had taken in order to be authorized to teach driving courses were many weeks shorter than what the students were legally mandated by the state to sit through. He thought he might enlighten the class to this irony the day before he quit, if that ever happened.

He was usually quiet during the driving lessons, and made every attempt to be amiable and comforting. There were days when he wanted to start talking and never stop, crack their heads open and pick at every bit of knowledge there. There were days where he wasn't even paying attention to the student's driving performance, thinking instead of his personal budget for that month, or that he, in fact, could not conceive of a single thing that his mother actually wanted for her birthday and hmmm...how old was she now?

He didn't dare look at any of the girls for anything more than a moment, lest any subtle, unknowing action of his be misconstrued as perverted the next day during lunch. Being a driver's ed teacher assigned a fair amount of vague creepiness to one's manner already, and it was a constant battle to dispel it enough to make the student feel comfortable.

Sometimes he would look down at his stomach, examining a girth that seemed to expand in leaps. If he was feeling particularly loose or comfortable with a student (it happened), then he would pat it and make a joke about how, yes, action must be taken against this threat. And soon.

The main thing, besides teaching them to drive, was to make the student comfortable. He had realized this after only a few months on the job. The more at ease they were then the better they drove and the better they absorbed instruction. He hated having to fail any of them. Angry phone calls from a parent always followed right after.

Before taking the position, years ago, he thought that perhaps this was the perfect occupation for him. That he could be a positively subversive element in these kids' lives, a motivational force mostly overlooked by the usual educational circles, but still as present and effective. He would introduce these children to new music, new ideas, and their learner's permit. Whether they wanted to pick any of these things up was their decision, but at least they would be exposed to it.

The students were less than receptive, and it made them unfocused and uncomfortable. The idea...the very drive behind why he became a driver's ed teacher (aside from needing a steady paycheck)...got real old, real fast.

Similiarly, so had he.

Cyan Plans For Breakfast

It is enough to know that it is the future, and that one doesn't need a precise year to pin these events down onto. If you must have some frame of reference, and who doesn't, then consider these happenings as a part of the mid-22nd century. This is a safe enough distance from our own period, one would think. An even gap between the living present and the distantly imagined, a flag planted just beyond the horizon, a space of time that nothing human, not even the forty or so children born in the time it takes to read this sentence, will ever see.

And besides, as far as spans of time go, the mid twenty second century is so well pre-mapped...what's one more prognostification going to hurt?

This story concerns a young fellow by the name of Cyan, who was given his moniker by a generation of parents who, seeking something less routine than Mary or Jordan or Sue, became briefly infatuated with forgotten names from feudal lore. This fad was brief, and not well-taken by many of the populace of that time. Thusly, Cyan is mostly alone when it comes time for morning roll call, although the presence of a Henri spelled with an i does bring him some comfort.

Currently, Cyan is in his room laying quietly on his bed. Soft orange light borders the ceiling, its illumination a breath away from useless. The still darkness softens the lines of the furnishings and plunges them half-formed into the background; it is a deep sea dive, secure and silent.

Wrapped around the boy's head is an ingenious invention. A mixture of plastics and photons, pounded flat and infused with an eerie white/blue glow. According to the trademark request filed by AppleSig three or four decades ago, it is called a Flimsiplast, although it's more common term is the simpler, rougher "flimsy". You can't go anywhere in the metallic, humid world of the mid 22nd century without one. Or rather, you could, but then one would naturally assume that you're going somewhere you don't expect to return from.

These are things you can do with a flimsy: Draw a movie, program, or slice of music from the Aircom Network. Download programs, software, or files that would be of use in whatever task you have been assigned. Present personal identification information to the proper officials. Pay for goods and services. Activate a pressure point in the flimsy's computer fabric and make it go as rigid as a board. Press it again and make it shrink and curl around your wrist for easy carrying. A flimsy is everything we hope we will someday get to use.

In this dystopian future - a future which, from the vantage point of the far past would seem dystopian but from the perspective of said future merely seems ordinary and nearly traditional - information is held over the head of the populace like a sword. Use information with expedience and exactness and you are advanced. Do so otherwise and prepare for a life in a hazy, undefined world, where momentum becomes an uttainable, almost physical, desire.

Cyan has a grammar test in the morning. Grammar is very important if one is to communicate much in as little time as possible. It has only been since the turn of the century, Cyan has been taught, that mankind has truly concentrated on this fundamental aspect of communication. Look at the literature of the Time Before Reason. It is sprawling and mad, concerned far too much with context and imparting nothing. Pages and pages that reveal a vast wastehouse of the human mind, a room cluttered with unnecessaries, obscuring truth and opposing the virtue of clarity.

He reads these texts every night before he goes to bed and finds them as alluring as threatened. In his head, Cyan struggles to keep a high wall between the sharp lessons of succinctness and the uncontrollable bounds of the past. Tonight the struggle has put him into a depressed stupor. He wishes the test could be taken and everything be done with, but he knows that, pass or fail, there will be more rigidity beyond tomorrow's exam. More testing and re-testing.

In protest, his flimsy is wrapped around his head. Cyan imagines that if he goes to sleep, it shall relax and sink into his brain, and when he awakes he will have all the knowledge ever known. Available for instant recall, able to become dormant with a thought, able to co-exist with the jungle of imagination that threatens to sprout up through the cracks of a normal life.

Cyan closes his eyes and lets the glow of the flimsy lure him into a hypnotic slumber. If this does not work, he thinks, he will just have to eat the thing for breakfast.